


A Thousand Summers

by Candy_A



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, Historical, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 13:23:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8753254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Candy_A/pseuds/Candy_A
Summary: Danny Williams is just looking for a diversion while his soon-to-be ex-wife, Rachel, and daughter, Grace, are taking a side excursion during their strained family vacation in Italy. Little does he know that a side trip to a remote village will change his life forever, and entwine the present with the past in a way he could never have imagined.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by a little morbid net-surfing curiosity into the subject of incorrupt corpses. Despite that concept, it’s not a horror story, but it definitely falls into the category of the supernatural and the spiritual. It’s an AU that begins before Steve and Danny meet, and offers an alternative – very alternative – version of how they got together.
> 
> The song lyrics are from “I Will Wait for You” (Gimble). The version that plays in my head for this story is sung by Tony Hadley and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOygXvNU6wk

_If it takes forever_

_I will wait for you_

_For a thousand summers_

_I will wait for you_

 

     Danny stepped out on the balcony of the luxury hotel in Rome where he had just arrived with his wife, Rachel, and their daughter, Grace, for a two-week vacation in Italy. In addition to this posh spot, they were also planning some side trips that would include other luxurious or, at the very least, historic, accommodations. The trip had been in the planning stages for months, part of Rachel’s plan to start exposing Grace to world travel as soon as she was truly old enough to enjoy and remember it. Danny wasn’t sure if eight years old was the right milestone for that, but Rachel was convinced that Grace needed to start collecting stamps on her passport, so here they were.

     And, as Rachel pointed out, much of Danny’s heritage was Italian, so beginning with trips that related to Grace’s ancestors seemed logical to her. Danny hadn’t earned any points with his wife when he suggested the side trip to Milan, the fashion Mecca of Italy, had something to do with the choice. She had a three-day excursion planned to show Grace all the highlights of the Milan fashion scene. Danny was fairly sure none of his ancestors were fashion designers or runway models, so he wasn’t sure how that tied into the cultural significance of the trip.

     The trip from the US to Italy had been frosty, to say the least. Rachel had very little to say and neither did he. They spent most of their time trying to sound cheerful for Grace’s sake. During one of their many epic arguments about a week before the trip, Rachel had blurted out that she wanted a divorce. So here they were on a family vacation of a lifetime as the family was on the verge of being torn in half. Danny already had his notice - Rachel wanted him out of the house pending the divorce. He hadn’t decided yet if he was going to fight that, if it was worth making Grace listen to them do battle every night or if he should just walk away. Or if there was anything left to fight for anymore.

     He sighed as he stared out at what he knew was an awe-inspiring view of the city. Then Grace was beside him with her new smart phone with the state-of-the-art digital camera snapping a photo of the view to add to her already epic collection of photos of _everything_ since they’d left Jersey.

     “It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed, lining up another shot. “Where are we going first?” she asked, excited.

     “We’re taking a nap, remember?” Rachel reminded her, joining them on the balcony. “Then dinner, and then tomorrow, we start out fresh.”

     “Can’t we go _somewhere_ now?” Grace wheedled, taking another picture of the view.

     “Why don’t we go out for a short walk and let Mommy get settled?” Danny suggested.

     “Yay!” Grace cheered, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the interior of the suite so they could leave.

     “Thank you for backing me up as usual, Daniel,” Rachel said crisply, shooting him a look and going back to her unpacking. “I’ll just get us all ‘settled’ while you two go exploring,” she added.

     “Bye, Mommy!” Grace replied happily, the sarcasm either having gone over her head or not impressing her enough to linger when she had a chance to go out. Before the big blow up, before he was given his walking papers, it might have worried Danny. Now, what did he have to lose? He was a dead man walking anyway as far as their marriage was concerned, so staying on Rachel’s good side had become an unattainable goal. If he were being honest with himself, it had been for some time.

     “We won’t be long,” he said to Rachel as they left the suite. “Your mom’s right, jet lag will knock you right out. We’ll stretch our legs a bit and then get some rest, okay?”

     “Okay, Danno,” she agreed, grinning.

     Within walking distance of the hotel was a big piazza with street performers and a market, and there was a gorgeous, gigantic fountain nearby that kept Grace snapping photos for quite a while. She even got a couple amused Italians to stop and take pictures of her with Danny in front of it. It crossed Danny’s mind what a wonderful trip this could be, if his marriage wasn’t disintegrating, and if he didn’t know that there was no way he could ever afford to take Grace on a trip like this himself. Rachel’s parents were footing the bill for this one, over his objections, since the only thing worse than them looking down their Patrician noses at him was taking handouts from them.

     They were eating Italian ice and strolling down the sidewalk, checking out the area, when Danny realized the shadows of dusk were starting to fall.

     “Your mother’s gonna kill me,” he muttered under his breath. “Come on, monkey, we need to get back to the hotel.”

     “I thought we came here to sight-see. Why would she be mad?” Grace asked, frowning.

     “She won’t be mad at you, kiddo. I stuck her with all the unpacking.”

     “I had fun,” she said, grinning. That made Danny smile.

     “Me, too,” he agreed. “Just, uh, don’t mention the Italian ice before dinner.”

     “I won’t,” she agreed, giggling.

       
********  


     Danny got to know the view from the balcony very well. He spent most of his time sitting there, staring out at it, avoiding spending time with Rachel once Grace was in bed. They’d had a strained dinner in the hotel dining room because Rachel was, as he predicted, furious with him for the length of time he’d taken on that “short” walk before dinner. Plus, sharing a bed with a woman who hated your guts and didn’t even want you to live in the same house anymore wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He hated himself for feeling a little spark of hope when she joined him on the balcony with a sweater over her flowing white negligee. She didn’t seem ready for battle, but he should have known better than to think she was weakening in her resolve or changing her mind. Still, the part of his heart he couldn’t control fluttered a little at the possibility. Until she opened her mouth.

     “I hope you’re not planning another little stunt like that, going off with Grace on your own and being the ‘fun’ parent,” she said, making little quote marks in the air.

     “It’s a vacation, Rachel. She wanted to go out exploring a little. That’s why we brought her here, isn’t it?”

     “Would it kill you to back me up just one time?”

     “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would ruin the trip if I took a walk with my daughter.”

     “Is this how it’s going to be for the entire two weeks?”

     “I hope not,” Danny muttered under his breath.

     “What is that supposed to mean? I’m the bad guy because I set some rules, or because I don’t appreciate you acting like another child I can’t control?”

     “Fine. I won’t take Grace anywhere without your written permission. How’s that?”

     “Get used to it. Soon enough, you’re going to need my permission, and visitation without permission is called parental kidnapping.”

     Danny stared at her angry profile in the moonlight.

     “When did you start hating me, Rachel?”

     “I don’t hate you. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just obvious that we can’t live together in any sort of harmony and I want more for myself, and for Grace, than living in that constant stress.”

     “Like Stan Edwards?” Danny asked. There was nothing good about the whole awful situation, but he would have paid good money to borrow Grace’s camera to catch the expression Rachel’s face when he brought up the name of “the other man.” “Didn’t think I knew about him, did you? I’m a cop, Rachel, and a damn good one. I know you’ve been seeing someone else for a few months now.”

     “I haven’t been ‘seeing’ Stan. I know him. There’s a big difference.”

     “Whatever.”

     “You’re accusing me of being unfaithful?”

     “I don’t know for sure if you’ve slept with him yet, but I know you have my replacement lined up.”

     “Were you going to say anything about it?”

     “I was hoping I was wrong, but when you asked for a divorce, it was kind of a dead giveaway.”

     “Things haven’t been good between us for a long time, Danny.”

     “We’ve always fought a lot, but we have Grace, and I thought we loved each other.”

     “Sometimes that’s not enough,” she said.

     “Yeah, I suppose not. I’ve done a background check on Stan. Love plus ten million bucks is pretty hard to beat with just love.”

     “And you wonder why I want a divorce,” she snapped, angry, standing.

     “Not once I got Stan’s financials back, I didn’t wonder about it.” Danny really just wanted the satisfaction of hurting her as much as she’d hurt him. He didn’t care about making the point, and he wasn’t sure all their problems were about money.

     “When you come back inside, please sleep on the couch.”

     “Grace won’t find that too suspicious.”

     “It’s not like you haven’t slept there before,” she retorted, storming back into the room.

       
********  


     Their first full day in Rome lived up to everything Danny had heard about visiting the city. _You will see a lot of amazing architecture, history, religious relics, and you’ll walk your legs off._ Some of it seemed to bore Grace, which was understandable for an eight-year-old, but other things fascinated her, like the interiors of the beautiful old churches, and viewing the “incorrupt” corpse of a real saint, on display in one of the churches.

     Danny found dead people in artificial states to be creepy anyway, but this took it to a new level. It was bad enough that people get painted up and dressed pretty and put on display for a funeral, but to lie in state, to be viewed, when you’ve been dead several hundred years?

     “Danno, you’ve seen dead people before. Is that real?” Grace asked, just loud enough to mortify Rachel and to carry to the ears of a few nearby tourists who were also viewing the body.

     “Most bodies would be dust after that many years, Monkey,” he said quietly, ignoring Rachel’s eye roll and brief covering of her face with one hand. “The Church believes that in some cases, if a body doesn’t decompose, it’s supporting evidence that the person was holy and should be a saint.”

     “So God keeps them like that?”

     “That’s what the Church believes. Some bodies are preserved because of the conditions they’re kept in - if the temperature, humidity level, soil composition, whatever, is just right, sometimes bodies stay in better shape.”

     “Do you really think your eight-year-old needs a detailed explanation of corpse decomposition?” Rachel asked, whispering the question angrily in Danny’s ear.

     “Since she asked about it, yeah, I do,” he replied out loud, not caring if Grace or anyone else heard him. “What do you want me to say? Magic fairies put spells on them?”

     “I think it’s time we moved on to something a bit less morose and more age appropriate,” she said, hustling Grace away from the somewhat morbid sight. Before Danny could follow them, a tiny, elderly lady with a deeply lined face dressed in black robes approached him. At first he thought she was a nun, but the garment that covered her head and body didn't exactly look like a nun's habit.

     “You must go to the Chiese di Santo Stefano,” she said in a heavily accented voice. “It is in a remote village in the hills. You will have to go there on a...a bicicletta,” she said, obviously having given up on the English word, bicycle.

     “Why would I do that?” Danny asked, smiling. She was very old and frail, and part of him just wanted to snap a picture of her since she was a more interesting Italian relic than the mummy in the box they’d been viewing. She gripped his arm with surprising strength.

     “He waits for you there,” she said, pinning him with a frightening stare from her beady little dark eyes. Something in that gaze unsettled him...it was familiar, there was something about those eyes that spoke to him without words.  “Go to the Church of Santo Stefano,” she repeated, and then she turned and shuffled away into a crowd of tourists milling around the church.

     “Wait!” he called out to her and began to follow her. Instead, he ran head on into Rachel who had Grace by the hand.

     “There you are. Let’s go. We’re starved and it’s past time for lunch,” she said.

     “I wanted to talk to that old woman, the one in the black robes. Did you see her? She was heading right toward here,” he said, gesturing to the area around them.

     “We’re in an Italian church, Danny. She was probably just an elderly nun. Why do you need to talk to her?”

     He stared at Rachel a moment, then at Grace’s inquisitive expression, and sighed.

     “I don’t, I guess. She just seemed like an interesting old lady who knew a lot of local history.” He could still feel the grip of her bony little hand on his arm. A chill ran down his spine.

     “Well, let’s go get something to eat and rest a while. Then it’s off to the Coliseum,” she said cheerfully, looking at Grace, who faked a smile but looked bored at the thought.

     As they left the church, Danny kept looking around at the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of the tiny elderly woman in the black veil, but he didn’t see her again.

       
********  


     The rest of the day was uneventful, even though Danny found himself scanning every crowd for the old woman in the black robes. Why, he had no idea. His cop’s brain told him it was illogical to expect to see her pop up at every tourist attraction, especially given her advanced age. It was unlikely she was going to take a walking tour of the city. Plus, she was probably just a senile old lady who was confused and mistook him for someone else, or was talking about something completely detached from reality.

     They ate an elegant dinner in an upscale restaurant a short distance from their hotel. The food was amazing and plentiful, accompanied by outstanding wine and an authentic, historic atmosphere. All Danny could think of were the changes in his life that were on the other side of this trip. The worst of those was the thought of not seeing Grace every day, not being a part of her life the way a live-in parent was. His schedule meant he sometimes missed dinner or didn't get home until after Grace was asleep, but one way or another, he usually saw her at least for a little while, sometime during a 24-hour period.

     "Danno," Grace said, sounding as if she was frustrated. He must have missed his cue to reply to something.

     "Dessert?" Rachel asked, annoyed. A waiter was standing by the table, a tray of delicacies for them to look over. Danny chose cannoli, which made Grace grin because that's what she'd chosen, too. Rachel had selected tiramisu.

     “Did you know that old lady at the church today?” Grace asked. Danny was a bit startled by that question, but almost relieved that someone else had seen her. He had begun to think he was hallucinating the way she seemed to vanish into the crowd. Of course, Rachel typically reacted to most things as if she thought he was nuts, so her attitude about the old woman shouldn’t have surprised him.

     “No, I didn’t. She was just telling me about some other interesting places to visit while we’re here.”

     “Like where?” Grace asked.

     “She was telling me about a church that was in such a remote location, you could only reach it by bicycle,” he said. Grace’s eyes widened.

     “Really? People live out there with no cars or anything?”

     “I guess they do,” he replied, smiling. “When did you see her?”

     “Right after she talked to you. She was kind of scary looking, like the old witch in Snow White.”

     “Really, Grace, that’s very rude,” Rachel corrected. “You shouldn’t make fun of people for how they look.”

     “I don’t think she meant it that way, Rachel. She _was_ a little scary-looking. You didn’t see her. She looked like she was about 200 years old.”

     “And she kept staring at me. It was weird,” Grace said. “I really wasn’t making fun of her, Mommy. It’s just how she looked.”

     “Anytime somebody’s staring at you and it makes you nervous, you get your mom or me, okay, Monkey? Even if it’s just an old lady.”

     “She kind of disappeared, so it didn’t matter.”

     “Kind of disappeared?” Rachel asked. “What are you talking about? Honestly, you two and your disappearing old ladies.”

     “There were a lot of people around, and somebody walked in front of her and then she was gone. But it was like she disappeared,” Grace said.

     “I know. It was a big crowd, so I couldn’t keep track of her either.”

     “Why would you want to?” Rachel asked, frowning.

     “I felt like I should recognize her, but I’m not sure why,” he said honestly, then regretted it.

     “I seriously doubt she’s anyone you met before.”

     “No, I’m sure you’re right, dear. As always,” Danny said, smiling, but he knew he couldn’t keep the sneer out of his expression or his voice. Fortunately, as the storm clouds formed in Rachel’s expression, the waiter returned with dessert. _Saved by the tiramisu,_ Danny thought to himself.

       
********  


     Maybe it was because he was dreading a longer, more significant goodbye that made him barely able to hold back tears seeing Grace off on her three-day fashion orgy with Rachel in Milan. It was too much a foreshadowing of what the future held: Rachel leaving and taking Grace with her. Well, more accurately, Danny being cast out of the family home with the clothes on his back and little else. But no matter who went where, the separation was inevitable, and it was killing him.

     With Rachel and Grace on their way, Danny returned to the hotel, and decided to stop at the front desk and ask a few questions about the church the old lady had told him about. The weather was beautiful and predicted to stay that way a few days, and provided it wasn’t an extreme endurance-level bicycle ride, some time outdoors and exploring a remote village might actually be an interesting side trip. Fortunately, the young man at the front desk spoke English. He was in his twenties, handsome, with dark hair and large, compelling dark eyes. Danny could appreciate a good looking man, even lust after one a bit, but he’d put that part of himself aside. He enjoyed women, and dating women was just a whole lot less complicated.

     Well, women were arguably more complicated than men, but dating them was a hell of a lot easier to explain to your friends and family. It wasn’t that Danny’s family was particularly hateful or bigoted, but he grew up around cops and firefighters, in a neighborhood where men were men and sissies were more likely to get beaten up on the playground. Since he was usually at a disadvantage for his size, further complicating his life by dating guys wasn’t something he wanted to take on. He did just fine defending himself - and even picking the occasional fight with someone significantly larger - but he wasn’t suicidal, either.

     “I ran into someone...I’m sure she was a local,” Danny said. “She told me about the Church of Santo Stefano...said you could only get there by bicycle.”

     “It’s a nice journey, actually, if you have the time.”

     “Do you have a brochure or something?”

     “They don’t have electricity out there, so they’re not big on producing tourist information, I’m afraid,” he replied, and Danny laughed at that.

     “Seriously, no electricity?”

     “That usually is enough to keep visitors away,” the man, whose name badge read “Donato”, chuckled.

     “Is that what they want? To keep visitors away?”

     “Here’s a little secret. There’s a small inn there that has a gas generator, so they do have lights and a few minimal conveniences for cooking. It’s very rustic, so if you’re wanting all the comforts of this place, it’s not gonna be for you,” he said.

     “What’s the story on the church? Does it have some kind of amazing architecture or something?”

     “It houses the ruins of the original shrine built around the remains of a local hero, I guess you’d call him. They refer to him as Santo Stefano, but he’s not recognized by the church as a saint. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the church is named for the recognized Saint Stephen, or Santo Stefano, not the guy whose remains are there.”

     “Kinda makes sense then...the old lady told me to go there while I was viewing the remains of one of the saints here, in one of the local churches.”

     “I didn’t actually get in to see him, but I hear he’s pretty incredible.”

     “You can view this guy?”

     “Yeah, like I said, the main part of the church is built around the old shrine. They keep it locked most of the time and have security there.”

     “Security? To protect a dead guy in a church you can only reach by bicycle?”

     “There are a lot of sick people around. They’re very protective of his resting place. The village is actually called Santo Stefano.”

     “They built this village around a dead guy?”

     “He was a Roman soldier who protected a lot of Christians from Roman persecution.”

     “So he was martyred?”

     “Not exactly. His lover was, and he killed himself.”

     “His lover?”

     “Probably why the Catholic Church didn’t canonize him,” Donato said. “His male lover was a scholar and a teacher who took in children orphaned when their parents were killed or jailed because of their faith. Obviously kids weren’t documented back then like they are now, so often the Romans didn’t know they existed or if they did, what became of them. Something happened and he got caught, and he died to protect the children. Most of them escaped, I guess. Anyway, the legend is that Stefano was so inconsolable at the death of his lover that he went off to some remote cave in the woods and threw himself on his sword. Not exactly the kind of thing the Catholic Church goes for in a saint. He was buried there, and I guess they dug him up at some point and he had never decayed. I wanna try to get out there again sometime and see if I can actually get in to see him. He’s supposed to be the gold standard in preserved corpses. Even better than the best ones around here.”

     “Yeah, sounds like a real tourist attraction,” Danny said with a smile and a roll of the eyes. Donato laughed. It was a nice laugh that revealed perfect, even white teeth surrounded by a nice five o’clock shadow. _Shit, he’s hot,_ Danny thought, wondering if he could get away with a tryst with a hot desk clerk while Rachel was away. Might beat the hell out of riding a bike for miles to look at a dead guy. It wasn’t like he was gonna salvage his marriage at this point...

     “You want directions?”

     “To what?”

     “Santo Stefano,” Donato replied, still smiling that smile.

     “Oh, yeah. Plus where can I get a bike?”

     “You’ll take a train into the mountains, and when you get as far as you can go, there’s a place that rents them.”

     Danny was quiet as the other man wrote down the information, then grabbed a nearby sheet of paper to write down directions and draw a crude map of the route to Santo Stefano.

     “No GPS out there either, huh?” Danny asked.

     “The cell reception is slim to none,” Donato said, still drawing. “Another reason it’s not high on the list of tourist attractions. Gotta leave the Facebook behind.”

     “Yeah, I’m beginning to wonder why I’m going there.” Danny smiled, but he was confused a little by all of it. Bicycling through rural Italy to some backwater village with no electricity and no cell reception would have been the last thing he’d have chosen to do while planning the trip from the comfort of a laptop in his living room several months ago.

     “Okay, so this is the train you’ll want to take,” Donato explained, pointing to the name of the train and the route. “That’s the number for the station. I can make a reservation for you if you like.”

     “That would be great. My Italian isn’t too good.”

     “No problem. Once you get there, go to this little shop near the train station,” he said, pointing to the Italian name of the business. “Rent your bike there and then follow the map. The bike ride takes a few hours, so you might want to stay over at the bed and breakfast near the train station and start out in the morning, since you’ll be getting there late afternoon. Be sure you have cash, because they don’t take plastic out there.”

     “Seriously?”

     “The bike rental place does, but the B&B and anything in the actual village won’t.”

     “Okay. Remind me why I’m doing this again.”

     “You’re looking for the ultimate tourist experience. Avventura!” he said, emphasizing the word with an appropriate flourishing gesture of his hand. “And you feel like you have to see Stefano now, for yourself,” he said, his knowing smile going from hot to a bit unnerving. Danny felt a chill as he took the paper. “I’ll make that reservation for you, Mr. Williams. I’ll call your room with the confirmation information. Should I just charge it to the credit card from your reservation?”

     “Yeah, that’s fine.” _Let Rachel and her parents pay to keep me entertained for a few days. They can afford it._ “Grazie,” Danny added, and Donato smiled. Whatever odd thing had passed over his features seemed to be gone, and there were those perfect white teeth and that hotness again.

                                                                                   

“You want to leave this afternoon, right?”

     “Yeah, sure, if you can get me a ticket.”

     “I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” he replied.

     And it wasn’t. Donato came through with a train ticket for Danny to begin his _avventura_ into the hills of rural Italy that very afternoon. He’d spent his free time picking up a few things he’d need for a bike trip and a visit to a remote village, including a backpack, a few basic emergency items, and some dried food. He wasn’t sure why he expected to need that, but he also wasn’t about to take chances on being stranded in a cave someplace without something to keep him going if he got lost. Dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, athletic shoes, and a light jacket, he boarded the train and settled in to enjoy the amazing scenery.

     He dozed off for a while, dreaming odd, scattered images of Grace playing outdoors in the grass, but it wasn’t a place he’d ever been before, and she was dressed...oddly. Crude stone structures and rolling hills of green were all that made up the landscape, and he couldn’t shake the fear that made him want to run to his daughter and sweep her up, and carry her to safety. But from what, he wasn’t sure. He came to with a start, smiling uneasily at the woman in the seat next to him, an older lady who just smiled back and returned to reading her magazine.

     Looking out the window, it seemed like the landscape looked a lot like the one in his dreams. He shrugged that off. Of course, it did. After all, he’d been looking out the window and thinking about Grace when he dozed off. It all made perfect sense.

     Like traveling into the hills of Italy to view a corpse in a village with no electricity.

       
********  


     Danny stayed in the bed and breakfast in the same small town where the train station was located. Donato was right; he wouldn’t have enough time to ride to Santo Stefano by bike before nightfall, and with no electricity at his destination - or at least very little and only in scattered places - it was likely to be pitch dark for the final leg of the journey if he’d attempted it then.

     After a challenging but gesture-filled conversation with an old woman who spoke no English at the “front desk” of the inn (a card table, two chairs, and a guest book), he’d wound up counting off some bills and she gave him a room key and a point toward the stairs. The four rooms upstairs shared a single bathroom, but it appeared only one other room was occupied, so Danny didn’t see that as too much of a problem. He did begin to wonder about his fellow tenant - who could actually be as gullible a tourist as he was to be making this journey into nowhere and paying someone he was sure had sworn at him in Italian for the privilege of sharing a bathroom with strangers.

     He was pleasantly surprised by the room. The house itself looked, from the outside, as if it hadn’t been updated in the last few centuries, with its stone exterior and tile roof. The downstairs was pretty rustic, too, with bare wood floors, peeling paint on the walls, and a crabby old woman playing cards at a table handling the reservations. The room itself had a nice tile floor, a paint job that was probably at least completed in the current century, and antique furniture that included a double bed, dresser, mirror, and rocking chair. There were wood and glass doors that opened onto a small balcony, and the view was incredible. He was glad he’d brought his good camera, and not just relied on his phone. He took several shots of the landscape from there, and now knew how he’d occupy himself until dinner, which he thought the old woman said was at 7:00. Either that, or breakfast was at that time in the morning, he wasn’t entirely sure, but some meal was served at 7 one time or the other.

     With his good camera in hand and his phone with the marginal cell signal in his pocket, he set off to take a short walk and take some photos. He wished Rachel would have found a trip like this interesting. The gorgeous landscape and rich historic value of the buildings was something it seemed like you should share with a traveling companion. Maybe share with your daughter, although he thought Grace might be a little young to really find this of much interest.

     He stopped by the shop to inquire about renting a bike, and the older man there assured him there was no danger he’d run out between then and morning, but accepted Danny’s deposit anyway and told him he could pick up his bike early the next morning.

     “I’m riding out to Santo Stefano,” he told the man as he handed him the money.

     “They don’t get many visitors,” he said in broken, heavily accented English.

     “Really? I would have thought the preserved body would be a big attraction. They seem to be interested in that in Rome. I find it all a little weird, looking at people who ought to be underground in a grave like they’re sideshow attractions.”

     “But you are here,” the man said, giving him an amused look.

     “Yeah, here I am,” Danny repeated, chuckling. “My wife and daughter are in Milan clothes shopping, so I was looking for a more authentic Italian experience.”

     “You must be a wealthy man if she can shop in Milan.”

     “Not quite. I’m a cop in Jersey, back in the US. He paused as the older man looked a bit confused. “Polizia...in the US.”

     “Ah, I see.”

     “Rich wife,” he added, and the other man laughed. “What do you know about Santo Stefano? Is it worth the ride?”

     “I have been there as a child. My mother would occasionally go there to the shrine. Of course, you know that outside this region, he is not a saint, not recognized by the Church.”

     “So I’ve heard. Because he had a male lover and committed suicide.”

     “You can’t argue with the preservation of the body. Most of the incorrupt saints...they are preserved with wax or chemicals. Some who are still preserved when their graves are first disturbed, once they are exposed to the air, the light...no more. Santo Stefano...he does not change.” The old man leaned forward. “When I was a boy, I saw him weep,” he said, gesturing toward his eyes.

     “You saw a dead guy crying?” Danny asked, raising his eyebrows.

     “You may see it, too. The legend says he mourns the death of his lover every year, about this time,” he said.

     “Well, if they need more tourists, they should hire you to do their publicity. I’m more interested, now,” he said, smiling. “Should be quite a show.”

     “You are making fun,” the man said, pinning him with an accusatory look. “You would be wise not to do that when you visit Santo Stefano. People here have grown up with a deep love and sense of...of protecting him, because he protected Christians, centuries ago, from the Romans.”

     It was on the tip of Danny’s tongue to make another smart remark about the whole situation, but something stopped him. Maybe it was the sincerity in the older man’s eyes. He hadn’t really meant to make fun of his religion.

     “No offense. I was raised in a house full of Irish-Italian Catholics, okay?” he said, smiling holding up his hands. “It’s just all a little hard to believe.”

     “Many things require faith, my friend. You must have some, and be open to the truths it will reveal.”

     “Sure. I’ll visit the shrine with an open mind,” he said, nodding. “And respect. I’m not here to offend the locals.”

     “Enjoy your trip. I hope you find what you are looking for,” he added.

     “Yeah, thanks,” Danny replied, a little confused by the odd conversation.

       
********  



	2. Chapter 2

     As it turned out, dinner was not at 7:00 in the evening, breakfast was at 7:00 in the morning. Danny had used up a considerable amount of his non-perishable food supply in desperation the night before, since there were no restaurants in the little town where he’d stopped. There was a market, but by the time he realized he needed _groceries_ , it was closed.

     The other tenant of the bed and breakfast was a middle aged woman who only spoke Italian and didn’t come downstairs for her breakfast until Danny was nearly finished with his. They exchanged a couple uneasy courtesies during the brief time they shared the dining room table, but he was almost finished eating and anxious to get started on his trip.

     After all, he didn’t want to miss the occasion when this ridiculously preserved saint also cried for his dead lover. He wondered how much more to the story there was, and if the locals had just added to it over the generations until it didn’t even resemble the original truth. He packed up his supplies in the backpack and stopped at the bike shop to pick up his rental. There was a woman about his age behind the counter and no sign of the old man.

     “I arranged a bike rental yesterday,” he said, and she smiled.

     “Danny, right?” she asked, walking around the counter and going to where the small selection of rental bikes sat.

     “That’s me,” he replied.

     “Let’s go with this one. It’s the newest one we have, and with the wire basket you can carry your backpack there instead of wearing it for the whole ride. It’s quite a trip to Santo Stefano, but it’s a beautiful ride,” she said, moving the bike forward for Danny. She had a slight Italian accent, but her English was excellent, much better than the old man who’d been on duty the day before.

     “Your English is really good. Did you study in the US?” Danny asked.

     “Actually, I did,” she replied, still smiling. “I’m surprised you were able to arrange a rental with my father,” she said. “He doesn’t speak a word of English, so your Italian must be passable.”

     “The man who was here yesterday spoke English.”

     “That’s impossible. My father owns the shop. He’s the only other person who would have rented you something.”

     “Then he knows more English than you think he does because he spoke English to me. I mean, it was heavily accented but he could speak the language.”

     She stared at him for a few seconds, as if she was deciding whether or not to pursue the conversation.

     “Well, I’m glad you managed to get your rental set up. He’s probably picked up a few words here and there from tourists over the years,” she added. “When do you expect to be back?”

     “Day after tomorrow. I already paid for the rental.”

     “Oh, yes, I see. Papa had a date on here but not that you had paid. I’ll just correct that,” she said, writing on the index card that went into a small metal file box next to an ancient cash register.

     “You’re not computerized at all?”

     “I keep a spreadsheet on my laptop. I’m never going to convert my father to the digital age, so I handle that end of things.”

     “Have you been to Santo Stefano before?”

     “A couple times with my father when I was little. I haven’t been out there lately. It’s a long ride and once you’ve seen the shrine, there’s not much reason to keep going back. But the scenery is lovely, and it’s a wonderful, relaxing tourist destination. Not many people make the trip. They usually want to visit a vineyard or have more activities available.”

     “I guess curiosity is getting the best of me.”

     “You’re going to see the shrine specifically, then?”

     “Yeah, I heard about it in Rome.”

     “You won’t see anything like him in Rome. It’s really quite amazing. Just don’t try to take pictures of the actual shrine. They don’t allow it.”

     “Why not?”

     “First, out of respect, since it is in essence a tomb - his resting place. I think the primary reason is that if images showed up online and it became popular, they’d be overrun with gawkers.”

     “Probably, although not being able to drive there would slow things down a little.”

     “I’m sure. Well, have a lovely trip, and we’ll see you day after tomorrow,” she concluded, and Danny smiled.

     “I will. Thanks.”

     He went outside with the bike and looked over the map, then started out toward the village. It was a beautiful drive through rolling hills, lush pastures, and the occasional isolated structure dotting the landscape. His cell phone wasn’t getting any signal now, so he found himself replaying in his head his last conversation with Rachel, the previous night, when he’d told her of his travel plans. She had ridiculed the whole idea of riding a bike into the middle of nowhere - which, he had to admit, he tended to agree with and probably would have said the same thing to her if she’d suggested it - and then asked him why on Earth he’d travel all that way to see a dead body in a shrine when there were plenty of them in Rome. Again, he couldn’t argue much with the logic, so he ended up saying he just wanted to kill a couple days doing something totally different.

     Finding a nice spot in a grassy area under a tree, he took his bike off the path and sat down to eat his lunch. It wasn’t much, just some rolls from breakfast, some packaged sausage sticks that didn’t require refrigeration he’d gotten in Rome, some chips and some water. Breakfast had been pretty hearty - the old woman who wasn’t much of a hostess was one hell of a good cook - so it didn’t take much to fill him up for the second leg of his trip. Still, he felt sleepy, and set the alarm on his phone for a half hour. He didn’t want to risk sleeping for too long and ending up trying to find his way to Santo Stefano in the dark. Leaning against the tree, he let himself doze.

     The water was crystal blue and perfect, refreshing as he splashed around in it, naked, washing off the sweat of the sunny, warm day. He was embraced from behind and felt the strength in that larger body, powerful arms closing around him and soft lips kissing and nipping at his neck and ear. A hard cock was nestling itself between his cheeks, not urgent or aggressive, but letting him know it was interested. The man behind him was kissing his neck, his shoulder, ruffling his hair that felt more disheveled somehow, like he hadn’t bothered to comb it.

     “Daniel,” a husky voice whispered in his ear, one of those large hands moving down the front of his body until it enclosed his own growing erection and began stroking him. He gasped, then moaned at the sensations...

     ...and sat up straight, blinking, more than mildly disappointed to find himself alone under the tree where he’d fallen asleep. His own moan had disturbed him, and now his cell phone alarm went off uselessly. He stopped it, shifting around because he now had an uncomfortable hardness straining against his jeans.

     “Fuck,” he muttered, surprised he’d had _that kind_ of dream about a guy. It had been a while. Of course now that his marriage was in the crapper and Rachel was capable of the longest dry spells between sex of any woman he’d been intimate with anyway, he supposed it wasn’t too surprising that nature would intrude at some point and his unhappy, neglected dick would take matters into its own hands. So to speak.

     He looked around, studied the landscape in all directions and, satisfied the only one who might see him was a squirrel scurrying up a nearby tree trunk, he unzipped his pants, got a couple napkins handy to keep his clothes clean, and reached in for his erection. He lay there stroking himself, trying to conjure up the memory of the man in the lake. He could remember the feel of him, his arms, his hands...more than that, he remembered an intense feeling of love that was unlike anything he’d ever felt during sex. It was what he’d always hoped to feel with his wife, what he’d never really felt with other lovers...and here it was in a dream with a man whose face he couldn’t see, whose body he couldn’t forget as he gasped and let out a couple cries of pleasure.

     After carefully wiping himself up, he found a packaged towelette in his bag and washed his hands and his dick, figuring that showing up at a shrine smelling like come with weird stains on his pants probably wouldn’t be the best idea. He snorted a laugh as he wondered if you could go to Hell for doing that.

     Still a little depressed at waking up to find himself alone, he got up and resumed his bike ride. About a mile down the road, he stopped short, staring. In the distance was a small pond, the water glistening in the sunshine. There were a couple of huge, probably ancient trees nearby, their elderly, gnarled branches moving like arthritic fingers over the water. He swallowed, trying to shake the feeling that he was looking at the pond from his dream. For some reason, the age of the trees made him shiver, thinking of how many centuries they had probably witnessed.

     Thinking of how they looked like enormous, gnarled versions of the trees in his dream...

     Laying the bike down, he walked closer to the water, and the wind picked up, rattling the trees’ old bones and making the water move fast in small waves. It felt like the temperature dropped ten degrees and, out of nowhere, clouds had come to cover the sun.

     _Daniel..._

He spun around and looked behind him, but no one was there. The whole trip had been eerily solitary, without a single soul visible anywhere, except for a couple of people he’d seen very early on, closer to the village where he’d spent the night. But he was utterly alone here, now, and yet that voice had been as clear as the sky had been, moments before the clouds came.

     Thoroughly chilled by the change in the air and the whole experience, he walked briskly back to the bike, put the jacket on he’d taken off when the sunshine had made it too warm, climbed on the bike and pedaled considerably faster than was comfortable for quite a distance until he calmed himself down and scolded himself for letting some sudden cloud cover and his imagination scare the shit out of him.

     By three that afternoon, he found himself coasting down a hill toward a grouping of old buildings, mostly small ones that were probably houses. At a bit of a distance from the “town” was a church, quite large and ornate for the surroundings. He had finally arrived at Santo Stefano, just as the clouds seemed to thicken and darken. He hoped the town’s lone inn had a room, though he doubted they were overrun with tourists at any given time. His legs and back ached from the long ride, and his knee was killing him. This was definitely an outing for someone who biked for fitness and pleasure, not someone who knew how to ride one but preferred to get his exercise in a gym.

     He got off the bike and walked it down the narrow dirt street that led to the church. There were a couple of small farms, a vineyard, a few houses on smaller plots of land, and a larger building with a sign in front that read Albergo de Santo Stefano. He’d picked up enough Italian in Rome and while planning the trip to know that meant “hotel”.

     Most of the buildings were made of stone or brick with shuttered windows and tile roofs. Bright flowers bloomed in pots and gardens around some of the houses, and he began to see the occasional human, either in their yards or around the town’s two lone businesses - the hotel and a small market across the street. For a few minutes, he regretted having watched _Children of the Corn_ the previous weekend. This place was just too quiet, and too underpopulated. Suddenly the insanity of making the trip at all swept over him. This was the perfect tourist scam. They could take his money and valuables, kill him and bury him in one of these fields, and no one would probably ever find him.

     Of course, he had very little money with him, no one was likely to kill him for a watch and a cheap smart phone, and his credit cards were nearly maxed out, so fuck them if they did kill him for his valuables.

     The church itself was a large, sprawling building, which seemed illogical for such a remote location with so few parishioners. There was a single, tall, square bell tower, the rest of the building being about two storeys tall. He leaned the bicycle against a tree nearby and walked up the short set of stone steps to the double wood doors with their iron handles. He frowned, confused, to see that there was a black funeral wreath hung on the door. He’d never seen something like that on a church before. He sighed, frustrated, at the black iron chain with its formidable looking padlock that kept the doors locked.

     “Great,” he muttered, resigned to take a walk around the church to find another entrance, or to approaching the nearest house, wondering if it might be the rectory. He started back down the steps when he heard the loud clank of metal hitting stone and the sound of a chain rattling behind him. He stared, stunned, at the padlock that lay open on the top step, and the chain that had fallen, useless, next to it. He stood there a moment, trying to come up with a logical explanation.

     It could be rusted, but it was a hell of a coincidence that it chose that moment to give way. Shrugging, figuring he’d see it as just good luck, he slowly pushed open one of the heavy doors. _Nothing good ever comes from locks that open by themselves in any horror movie, ever,_ he reminded himself as he entered the shadowy building.

     There was a bit of daylight fighting its way through the stained glass windows in the main part of the church with its high domed ceiling. The pews were all polished as if someone had just dusted them. It was obvious the church was constantly maintained and most likely frequently used. Why they kept their doors chained in the middle of the day in a place like this, he had no idea. There were churches in the heart of big cities that were open and unlocked all day.

     There was an altar, but to the right of that was a somewhat bizarre departure from the standard church architecture. There was an arched opening to a chamber beyond it, a chamber where the exterior was a crude, aged stone instead of the plastered walls of the church, as if the church had been built around it but not allowed in any way to alter it.

     _The shrine,_ Danny thought to himself, slowly approaching it, a little put off by the small arched doorway that was barely high enough for him to pass through without ducking.

     _Great, rode all this way so I could have a panic attack from my claustrophobia._

     Once inside the chamber, he had to strain to see where he was going. His destination, however, was clearly visible. It was a glass box on a stone pedestal, edged in gold, surrounded by banks of votive candles, with a large array of flowers in bouquets, pots, and vases in front of it. In the box was the form of a man.

     Danny wasn’t sure why he was hanging back a bit. This was what he came to see. The remarkably preserved Santo Stefano, the unofficial patron saint of this little village. A man who committed suicide in despair over the loss of his male lover...and he winds up the most incorrupt saint of them all. Danny had to snort a little laugh at that, thinking of how somehow, Stefano had the last laugh on the Catholic Church, even if they wouldn’t recognize him. He was clearly protected and venerated by this remote community, and Danny figured anyone who tried to tamper with or remove his remains would probably not be seen outside this village again.

     He kept moving forward, a little uneasy as he got closer. They weren’t kidding about perfect preservation. The body was on its back, arms crossed on its chest, hands arranged over the sword that lay atop the body. Soft curls of dark hair covered its head and, as he got closer to the kneeler in front of the coffin, he could see the perfect features of a man who looked as if he might turn his head and speak at any moment. Even the long, dark lashes were thick and intact and perfect.

     Santo Stefano was easily the most handsome man Danny had ever seen - even better looking than Donato, the hot desk clerk back at the hotel in Rome.

     This man had to be close to Danny’s age when he died, and he was obviously in fantastic shape. Danny leaned in a bit closer to inspect the perfect contours of the biceps and the powerful arms dusted with dark hair that lay still there, the large, strong hands positioned over the sword’s handle. He was dressed in a long white garment that resembled a toga in the way it left those incredible arms exposed, but it covered his legs down to his feet. Even those looked like he’d just had a pedicure before they put on the sandals he wore. There was a gold laurel wreath amidst the dark curls.

     Danny’s heart was racing, and he felt a cold sweat forming on his body. His eyes bulged as he watched a single tear make its way from the corner of one closed eye, down the side of the dead man’s face, until it disappeared into the dark curls. With shaking hands, he found his phone and raised it to take a photo.

     “Lay the phone down on the kneeler and step away from it,” a male voice said from behind him. He spun around to see a priest standing there in a black suit and Roman collar, holding a gun on him.

     “I didn’t know priests were armed these days,” he said, laying the phone on the kneeler.

     “We don’t allow photography or video. Whatever weapon you have, that you used to break the chain and the lock, I will take that, too, now.” The man was tall and broad, with salt and pepper hair. He looked Italian, but then that wasn’t really a stretch considering their location. His English was flawless.

     “I didn’t break the lock. The chain fell off the door.”

     “That’s amusing. Now lay down your weapon.”

     “Look, I’m a cop, back in the States. I wasn’t trying to break in. I just wanted to come and see the shrine and, uh, him... I can just go.”

     The priest stared at him for a few long moments and then put his gun back in a holster under his suit coat.

     “Don’t worry about me posting pictures on Facebook or something. I wouldn’t want to admit to being enough of a sucker to ride a bike all the way out here to see this guy, who’s obviously still alive. It’s a good stunt, with the candles and the flowers and the legend, but he’s as alive as I am.”

     “I assure you, he’s quite dead. If you came all the way out here, you obviously know what an incorrupt saint is.”

     “Yeah, I know. I saw some in Rome, but none of them looked like this. I keep expecting him to sit up and start talking.”

     “He is remarkable. I’ve traveled all over the world, seen holy relics of many saints. You will never see another like him,” he said, looking at the “corpse” reverently. “He was a warrior for God, and God has rewarded him.”

     “With what? Eternal preservation in a box? Being so grief-stricken than he threw himself on a sword rather than go on living? Yeah, God really did him some big favors,” Danny concluded, wondering why he was defending a dead man. Or, more precisely, why he was sticking up for what had to be a phony corpse and a well-crafted story to lure gullible tourists.

     “Why did you come here?” the priest asked. “You clearly are not religious.”

     “No, I’m not. I thought it would be interesting. This old lady approached me in one of the Churches in Rome and told me to come here, that he was waiting for me. Hell of a tourist gimmick you’ve got going here, Father. So what happens now, you tell me how much it’s gonna cost me to get out of here without getting shot?”

     The priest continued to stare at him, then he seemed to come back to his senses.

     “I don’t plan to shoot you,” he said.

     “What is this whole setup anyway? What’s the point?”

     “It’s not a setup.”

     “Even if this guy is dead, he hasn’t been dead long, and your mortician did a hell of a job on him. That just begs the question of where you keep getting your dead guys. I’m more inclined to think you have some kind of ventilation system--”

     “When did you see him breathe? He has no use for a ventilation system.”

     “So he’s good at holding his breath. It’s not like I’ve been staring at him the whole time. He could take a few breaths when he needed to. Look, it’s obvious he didn’t die and fall down here and then was preserved. He’s obviously been cleaned up and dressed and prepared for funeral type viewing. If his remains were that old, even if they’d been miraculously preserved, once the air hit him, he’d be a pile of dust.”

     “But he isn’t, is he?” the priest asked, arching a dark eyebrow, a slight smile on his face. “You throw a lot of challenges my way, but I think you want to believe. You want me to dispel the issues that keep you from believing what you see, what you want to believe.”

     “I don’t want to believe anything in particular. I just thought this sounded interesting so I’d check it out.”

     “I see. My name is Father Ignacio, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand as he approached Danny.

     “Danny Williams,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. The priest faltered a bit with the handshake, a look of surprise crossing his features.

     “Daniel.”

     “That’s my name, yes,” Danny replied, withdrawing his hand, confused. “I generally go by Danny,” he repeated.

     “Would you like to know his whole story?”

     “There’s more?”

     “Yes, much more,” Father Ignacio said. “My housekeeper is making baked spaghetti for dinner, and she is probably the best cook in the village.”

     “No disrespect, Father, but does she have much competition for the title?” Danny joked.

     “Actually, she does,” he replied, chuckling. “There are a few elderly women in the village who are amazing cooks, and they often bring food to the rectory,” he added. “I rarely have the opportunity to meet visitors from so far away...any visitors, for that matter. I would enjoy the company, and I can almost assure you that the food and accommodations will be better than they are at the inn.”

     “I didn’t think any of you people had electricity out here.”

     “The folks in Rome get a bit carried away in how rustic they portray us to be,” he responded, leading Danny away from the shrine, and away from Santo Stefano. Danny wasn’t sure why that troubled him, as if he felt he should somehow stay there and keep a vigil by the body. “Although it is true we don’t have wi-fi or cell reception out here.”

     “So I noticed,” Danny replied.

     “Not every home has electricity, but most that are in this little cluster of homes and businesses do. This way,” he said, leading Danny across the front of the church, genuflecting briefly as he passed the altar, on their way to a door at the other side of the buidling. “You can access the rectory this way.”

     “It’s not a separate house then?”

     “No, it’s all part of this building.”

     “I should get my things,” Danny said, jerking a thumb toward the main entrance.

     “Of course.”

     “You’re sure this isn’t an imposition? I was planning on staying at the inn.”

     “Not at all. I have guest quarters I almost never have occasion to use, and more food than I’ll eat in a week. Besides, you came all this way to learn more about Santo Stefano.”

     “That I did,” Danny agreed, hurrying out to get his backpack and parking his bike in a less conspicuous spot on the side of the church. He rejoined the priest and walked with him down a long hallway that ended in another old, well-worn door that he opened into a pleasant, tile-floored room with comfortable-looking leather furniture, loaded bookshelves, and the smell of cooking in the air. The windows overlooked the rolling hills and a colorful garden was visible immediately outside, just beyond a patio that was lined with flower pots and was furnished with an iron table and chairs. “This is nice,” Danny said.

     “Thank you. It’s very comfortable, although I do miss the wi-fi sometimes,” Father Ignacio admitted, smiling.

     “Where were you before you came here?”

     “I’m from Santo Stefano,” he said. “I studied in Rome, had parishes in some of the larger cities, but my goal was to return here. I literally wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Stefano. My ancestors have been traced back to his time, and if all that information is correct, he saved my bloodline when he helped my ancestors evade Roman persecution.”

     “Wow. Now that’s more than you can usually get on Ancestry.com.”

     “Yes, indeed,” he agreed, laughing. “The guest room is right this way,” he said, leading Danny down a short hall to another large, pleasant room with big windows and a tile floor, though this floor had a large woven rug covering a portion of it where the bed sat, presumably to prevent bare feet from hitting cold tile in the morning. There was a large bed with a colorful quilt there, a small easy chair, a dresser, and a closet.  “It’s not fancy but the mattress is better than what you’d get at the inn. This one has been replaced in the last ten years. The rooms do share a common bathroom, which is right over here,” he said, showing it to Danny.

     “Something tells me there are no luxury suites with private baths at the inn.”

     “No, if you were looking for luxury, you came to the wrong tourist destination,” he replied. “I’ll let you relax a bit before dinner.”

     “This is really nice of you, inviting me for dinner and putting me up here. I’ll be glad to make a donation to the church.”

     “That’s not required, of course, but it’s very thoughtful, thank you. Feel free to make yourself at home and move about as you like. I’m working on a sermon, so I’ll be in my office until dinner.”

     “Great. Thanks again, Father.”

     “My pleasure,” he replied, leaving Danny to entertain himself for a couple hours before dinner time. He wondered if the door was unlocked that led back into the church. After freshening up a bit and using the bathroom, he decided to take a walk back that way and find out. After all, Father Ignacio had told him to make himself at home and move about. He never said the shrine was off-limits.

     Danny was relieved to find the door to the passageway unlocked, and even more pleased to find the door back into the church unlocked, also. The church was eerie and silent, only a bit of faint light from candles adding to the minimal daylight that fought its way through the aging stained glass. The interior of the little shrine was even darker.

     He wasn’t sure what he expected when he got there. Maybe he thought he’d surprise them all and catch “Santo Stefano” sitting up eating a sandwich or something, or having left his glass box for a bathroom break. But there he was, silent and still, his pose unchanged.

     Danny leaned close over the glass, examining the surface of the “skin” as much as he could under those conditions. He’d seen outstanding wax figures before. On a trip to Vegas, he’d been to the famous wax museum there, and some of those figures were just plain unsettling in their resemblance to real live humans. It didn’t help that Stefano was damn close to perfect, although a tiny hairline scar you could barely see lurked near the dark curls framing his forehead, and there was another little imperfection on his cheek. Danny couldn’t remember seeing a corpse with a five o’clock shadow before, either, but Stefano had one, though it wasn’t terribly bold from a distance.

     “What the hell is your story?” he asked the figure in the glass box. What troubled him most was that he could still see a faint track of the tear that had leaked from the motionless man’s eye earlier. A live human probably would have wiped it away, and wax statues don’t cry. And it was the time of year when Santo Stefano was supposed to weep for his lost lover around the anniversary of his death.

     He began to examine the box itself, looking for a lever, button, hinge, or way out. Then he began to question the platform it rested on, wondering if the actor playing such a convincing corpse could get in and out that way somehow. Of course, how could he lie there all that time and never breathe?

     Unless he was dead, but just recently, and well embalmed and preserved in his sealed box. If that was true, though, who was he really, and how did he die? Did they periodically kill some poor sap, stick a dark wig and a dress on him, and refresh their “Santo Stefano” exhibit? Danny finally moved back a bit, frustrated. He didn’t understand how they were pulling off this illusion, and he further didn’t understand why he was hanging around a dark stone shrine with a dead body or a wax statue instead of relaxing in the nicely appointed rectory.

     He jumped even further back from the glass coffin when the figure inside took in a long, shuddering breath.

     “Here you are,” Father Ignacio said from behind him.

     “He breathed!” Danny exclaimed. He expected the priest to deny it, to say something to explain it away, but he didn’t.

     “I think you should come back to the rectory with me. Dinner is almost ready, and we’ll have a more in-depth discussion about him,” he said, nodding toward the glass coffin.

     Danny opened his mouth to object, but then he looked back at Stefano’s now still form and said nothing, following Father Ignacio back toward the rectory, wondering if he’d gone insane, or if Father Ignacio was even more insane than he was, since the notion that Stefano breathed didn’t seem to upset him much.

     The housekeeper was a jovial, gray-haired, grandmotherly type in a house dress and apron who spoke only Italian, but for some reason took a liking to Danny, patting his cheek and saying something in Italian as she set the food in front of him. Father Ignacio chuckled as she left the dining room.

     “Angela said you are a good Italian boy, and you should eat up because you’re too skinny.”

     “Ah,” Danny replied, smiling, though he was more interested in what the priest had to tell him about Stefano than he was in the housekeeper’s assessment of his physique. A nice big drink of the wine they were having with dinner was helping to ease his nerves a bit, but not by much.

     “Stefano was a Roman Soldier, one of the emperor’s favorites, as legend has it. He was a fierce warrior and often personally guarded the emperor and his family. Things began to get complicated for him when he had moral issues with the persecution of Christians and eventually converted to Christianity.”

     “Yeah, I heard most of this.”

     “Patience, Daniel. It’s all part of the story.”

     “Why do you keep calling me ‘Daniel’? My mother does sometimes, and my wife when she’s pissed off at me. Sorry, Father.”

     “That’s not the strongest language I’ve ever heard,” he said, smiling. “It was because of Stefano’s faith and his tendency to _not_ carry out the anti-Christian tasks he was assigned that he met the man he fell in love with.” He paused. “His name was Daniel, and he was a teacher by trade, a widower with a young daughter. During the height of the Roman persecution of Christians, Daniel took in children orphaned or abandoned by parents who were arrested or killed for their faith.”

     “No offense, Father, but the guy at the hotel in Rome knew most of that. I mean, I didn’t know about the name being the same, or that the guy had a daughter, but everything else...”

     “Are you always this impatient when someone tells you a story?” Father Ignacio asked, looking amused.

     “Pretty much, yeah,” Danny admitted, chuckling. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

     “Daniel was careful - he was a teacher, not a crusader. He didn’t put himself or his daughter in direct jeopardy. The children he protected were well aware, given the fate of their parents, of the importance of _not_ saying the wrong thing to the wrong people. It wasn’t until the young man, Donato, was captured by the Romans and tortured into talking that the truth about the orphans Daniel had taken in over the years came to light.”

     “Okay, now you’re pushing it, Father. The kid at the front desk of the hotel in Rome was named ‘Donato’. And the lover is supposedly named ‘Daniel’? And the old guy at the bike shop doesn’t speak English, but he talks to me about this whole thing? Come on. I don’t know what your operation is about here, but it’s obvious something’s going on.”

     “Operation? Just how elaborate of an operation do you think we run here? And for what purpose?”

     “How should I know? Maybe you get dummies like me out here and steal their valuables and turn them into your next Stefano as soon as the current one starts getting a little green around the edges. Maybe you work for the Mafia. How should I know?”

     “The Mafia?” Father Ignacio asked, raising his eyebrows. “If the Mafia wanted to kill you, they would shoot you in the head and throw you in the river back home in Jersey, or drive you over the bridge to New York and dump you there. I hardly think they’d wait for you to plan a trip to Italy so they could lure you to a remote village, embalm you, and turn you into a tourist attraction.”

     “You sound like you know a little about the Mafia, Father.”

     “I’m Italian. And I happen to like the Godfather movies. Would you like me to continue the story?”

     “Yeah, I would. Sorry. I’ll stop interrupting.” Danny ate a few bites of the food. It was delicious and he was empty, though he was more interested in the information than the menu.

     “Donato was one of the first children Daniel ever rescued, and he was a young man at the time the Romans arrested him.”

     “How did Stefano and Daniel get together?”

     Father Ignacio arched an eyebrow at Danny.

     “Sorry, Father.”

     “Stefano saved the child of a Christian woman who was arrested. He had heard about Daniel, and took the baby to him. The theory is that Stefano visited occasionally to see how the child was doing, and ultimately fell in love with Daniel. Enough people apparently knew the true nature of their relationship that it was a badly kept secret among their allies. As ancient romances go, some accounts say Cleopatra and Marc Antony looked platonic by comparison,” Father Ignacio said, smiling a little mischievously.

     “What happened to Daniel’s daughter?”

     “Gratia? She plays a very important role in the story, though a bit later on.”

     “Gratia?” Danny asked. “This can’t be real,” he took a drink of his wine, his hand shaking a bit.

     “Why not?”

     “My daughter’s name is Grace.”

     Even Father Ignacio looked surprised by that.

     “I named her after my partner, Grace...she was killed in the line of duty,” he said, not really wanting to dredge up painful memories of watching Grace Tilwell being murdered in front of him. “Still, how is all this possible?”

     “I don’t know, and the name could be coincidence. You named her ‘Grace’ for a very specific reason that had nothing to do with this.” The priest sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Daniel was described in one of the rare writings from Stefano himself as having ‘hair of spun gold and eyes like the summer sky’.”

     “What do you think all this means, Father?”

     “Truthfully? I think there’s a reason Stefano has been in the state he’s in all these centuries.”

     “If you say ‘the Lord works in mysterious ways,’ I’m leaving.”

     “Then I won’t say that,” Father Ignacio replied, laughing. Then he became serious again. “Danny, you were drawn here for some reason you can’t explain, and there are some stunning parallels between the present and the past. Whatever you choose to believe, Stefano is in the natural state he was in when his body was first exhumed from its remote grave by Gratia and her husband some twenty years after his death.”

     “Gratia dug him up?”

     “Would you like to hear the rest of the story?”

     “Yeah, of course. How do you know all this?”

     “My father was a historian, a professor at Sapienza University in Rome. He devoted his life to the study of ancient Rome, and the story of Stefano and Daniel was particularly fascinating to him. It was the preserved relic of Stefano’s body, obviously, that brought it to the foreground for him, and then tracing our family lineage back to a man Stefano protected from the Romans, but it was also the nature of the relationship.” He paused. “My father came out of the closet when he was in his fifties. Suddenly the reason he became so fascinated with Stefano and Daniel became fairly obvious. Their relationship was forbidden on so many levels, and yet so intense and passionate that the legend of it survived centuries.”

     “Why did Stefano end up killing himself? What happened to Daniel?” Danny paused. “Okay, I’ll let you tell the story. It’s just...so much of this I don’t understand.”

     “Stefano apparently slipped away from Rome whenever he could to be with Daniel, and he loved being with the children. Gratia was very devoted to Stefano and it’s because of her that his body was ever enshrined and that his memory was honored the way it is. It’s most likely because of his affair with Stefano that Daniel came to the attention of the authorities in Rome. They had no real cause to arrest him, which in those days didn’t stop them, but Stefano was from a very influential family - his father before him was a Roman general, his mother was a shirttail relative of the emperor - so you didn’t just accuse him or one of his friends lightly. Even if he was having an affair with Daniel, that probably wouldn’t be cause for them to arrest or kill Daniel. Roman emperors weren’t known for their strict code of sexual morals, so a homosexual affair by a Roman soldier wouldn’t have been worth the fuss. What was problematic was that Stefano was supposed to be enforcing the laws of the Roman Empire, and he really wasn’t - he was protecting Christians, sleeping with a man who was strongly suspected of doing the same, and playing daddy to a growing number of children whose origins began to be questioned. It was a good bet Stefano would take those secrets to his grave, and torture wouldn’t drag it out of him, so they captured Donato, the oldest boy Daniel had cared for. They tortured him for days until he finally broke and told them everything they wanted to know about Daniel.”

     “What became of Donato?”

     “There’s no concrete account, but the best theory is that they put him out of his misery. He was most likely quite badly injured or mutilated by that point, if they’d been at it for days, so with no modern medical intervention, he’d have only died a gruesome and prolonged death, even if they didn’t finish him right then.”

     “They really didn’t have any decency, did they? He was just a kid.”

     “Mercy wasn’t high on their list, no. So they set off into the countryside to arrest Daniel and round up the children. Someone got word to Stefano, who was in Rome at the time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to reach Daniel before the soldiers sent to arrest him did. According to an account written by Gratia, one of the older children, a girl who was probably about fourteen or fifteen at the time, rounded up the children and hid them in an underground chamber when Daniel saw the Roman soldiers approaching. He knew Stefano wasn’t with them, since he was always leading the group if he was in the village with other soldiers. Where the trouble came in is that the first soldier in the door of Daniel’s house saw him covering the entrance to the underground hiding place, and Daniel struggled with him and slit his throat. The next soldier through the door didn’t know about the underground hiding place, thanks to Daniel’s quick action, but he slit Daniel’s throat on the spot for killing the soldier.”

     “Resisting arrest,” Danny muttered, touching his own throat almost unconsciously.

     “Exactly. When Stefano did reach Daniel’s house, he was already dead, his head cradled in Gratia’s blood-soaked lap, the other children still hiding. Gratia said Stefano was almost cold at the time, that she thought maybe he didn’t really love her father after all, because he spent so little time mourning his death. He pulled Gratia away from the body, rounded up the other children, and loaded them in a horse-drawn cart. She describes a terrifying, death-defying ride through the countryside to a large farm on the outskirts of the village. The family there hid the children and helped them escape to other villages. Stefano left and was not seen again. Except that Gratia and an older boy ran away from the farm and spent days traveling to a place where she knew Stefano and Daniel used to go to be alone. A cave, deep in the woods. They found Stefano’s body there, apparently in the condition it’s still in now, since ordinarily decay would have begun immediately under the circumstances. He had plunged his sword so deeply into his heart that the point of it had pierced his back. They buried him there. When they were grown, Gratia married the man who had traveled back there with her. When she was an old woman, they returned to the village and settled in the home where Daniel died. The accounts of why that happened or who had lived there in the meantime are pretty scattered and uncertain. What we do know is that Gratia, even though she was very old by then and the trip was difficult, would take flowers to Stefano’s grave once a month. Then one day, she had a dream about digging up Stefano’s remains and finding him perfectly preserved. She and her husband traveled to the cave with their two grown sons, dug up the body, and found that she was right.”

     “What about the Romans? If I remember my history right, Christianity wasn’t legal for hundreds of years.”

     “You are correct, but it was only a brief time in history, maybe a decade or so, when the worst of the Christian persecution was carried out - when Christians were rounded up and executed or otherwise imprisoned or tortured. Many of the families in this village owed their survival to Stefano, so when his body was unearthed in such pristine condition, they built a shrine and moved the remains there. First, it was somewhat Egyptian, almost, with him resting in a decorated casket. Eventually, he was displayed in glass coffins of varying styles as that technology became available. And so here he is.”

     “What became of Gratia?”

     “Once Stefano was enshrined here, she spent most of her final years keeping fresh flowers around the casket, telling the story to newcomers, making sure his legacy, and her father’s bravery in giving his life to protect the children, weren’t forgotten.”

     “She lived to be old?”

     “For those times, yes, she was considered very old. Accounts are dicey as to exactly how old, but she is described as a tiny woman with a deeply lined face and white hair who always dressed in black robes from the time she was a young girl - shortly after her father and Stefano died - until she died herself. Daniel was not very tall, either, apparently.” Father Ignacio took another drink of his wine.

     “Of course not,” Danny said, sighing. “He was a short blue-eyed blond. What else would he be?”

     “I can only tell you the story. You’ll have to decide what it means.”

     “You say Gratia was a small woman, who lived to be very old, and dressed in black robes?”

     “Yes...why, does that mean something to you?”

     “Back in Rome, there was an old lady at the church there...the one who told me to come here. That’s what she looked like. Small, old, dressed in black...her eyes...were familiar.”

     “Some people do believe in angels and messengers,” Father Ignacio said, shrugging slightly. “She could just have been an old local woman who gave you tourist advice. Of course, if Gratia could do anything to bring her father or Stefano any kind of peace, I’m sure she’d do that.”

     Danny digested that idea a moment, but it was a bit too much to figure out all at once, so he chose to move on.

     “Stefano was never canonized, though, in spite of all he did for Christians?”

     “No. The Romans were more liberal than the Christians when it came to sexuality, and suicide is a mortal sin, so Stefano is like the black sheep of the incorrupt corpses. The Church considers we are named for the official Saint Stephen, not our own Santo Stefano.”

     “They know about the body, though.”

     “Yes, they know about it. They’ve written it off the way you did at first - a hoax, a wax statue, perhaps. A silly village of superstitious, uneducated rural peasants. It’s probably better that way. What peace he has comes from the serenity of his surroundings I suppose.” Father Ignacio looked at Danny for a long moment. “You’re deeply troubled by all this, I can tell.”

     “You’ve gotta admit, Father, it’s a pretty strange set of circumstances.”

     “Gratia’s granddaughter is the one who began spreading the idea that Stefano was so devastated by the loss of Daniel that he was trapped between dimensions, that he couldn’t leave without Daniel, that he was waiting for him, that his soul was so shattered it couldn’t move on.”

     “Was she considered a nut or something?”

     “No, but her theory wasn’t exactly endorsed by the Church.”

     “What do you think of her theory?” Danny closed his eyes and paused. “Wait, don’t answer that. This is nuts. None of this proves anything, and... Look, Father, I appreciate your hospitality. It’s really above and beyond. But this whole thing...it all happened centuries ago, even assuming any of it happened the way the story goes. You seem like a decent guy. I don’t know what the gimmick is behind all of it, but I can’t let myself get sucked in by it.”

     “You were sucked into this the moment you heard his name, and then when you saw him, you felt it. I have nothing to gain or lose regardless of what you do, although I do think he’s waited long enough.”

     “For what? If he was gonna be reunited with Daniel, they’re both dead, so what’s stopping him?”

     “I’m not God, I really wouldn’t know. The Church is a flawed organization run by flawed humans who can only guess and surmise how the afterlife works. God never gave us a blueprint. Maybe Stefano did have to pay a price for not living out God’s plan for him. If the state he’s in now is that price, it was a terrible, steep one. The truth is, many of us in this village believe that Stefano is in a state of...well, not Grace exactly, or he’d be at rest, at peace. But that he is in some kind of suspended animation, waiting. And then you showed up and it all fits.” Father Ignacio paused. “No one, in all of the years he’s been here, on display...no one has ever claimed to have seen him breathe.”

     “It was an illusion, obviously. I’d been staring at him long enough that I imagined it. A trick of light or shadow or...or something. But whatever he is, he’s not alive, and he’s not some centuries old corpse waiting, like Sleeping Beauty, to be awakened by his lover’s kiss. Even my eight-year-old daughter has trouble believing that plot anymore.”

     “Your daughter, Grace?”

     “Don’t,” Danny said, standing, shaking a finger in the priest’s direction. “Don’t use my daughter to suck me into this...this...twisted horror story fairly tale!” He walked away from the table. “I’m packing my stuff and going to the inn. Thanks for dinner and the tall tale.”

     “Why are you angry?” Father Ignacio asked.

     “Because all this is nonsense. Pardon my language, Father, but it’s all bullshit. Every last bit of it. If Gratia’s granddaughter started some kind of spin-off religion around this guy’s body, then she was a nut and all the people who bought into it were nuts, too. Back home, we call that a cult!” He stormed off to his room and grabbed his belongings.

     His mind was bombarding him with images, emotions, and things that felt unsettlingly like memories. But they weren’t memories. They were fantasies. At best they were ancient history about two guys who met a bad end hundreds of years ago. If any of it was true, it was sad Daniel died protecting orphans and sad that Stefano couldn’t save him and killed himself. But it was over. Whatever that thing was in the box in the shrine wasn’t a living, breathing man waiting for his lost lover.

     As he strode toward the door of the rectory, he expected Father Ignacio to call out to him or try to stop him, but the priest was still in the dining room, calmly sipping his wine, saying nothing as Danny left.

     He walked his bike along the narrow stone path in the shadows of twilight until he reached the inn. Leaving his bike outside that building, he went inside to find four older people sitting around a table eating and laughing. One of the men stood.

     “You want a room?” he asked in a heavily accented voice, smiling.

     “Yes, please. Just for tonight. I’m leaving at first light,” he added, not sure why he felt the need to express that intention.

     “As you wish, but my wife makes a delicious breakfast we serve about seven-thirty,” he said. “You should stay, then start your journey home on a full stomach,” he said, gesturing grandly.

     “You’re probably right,” Danny conceded, smiling faintly as he signed yet another primitive guest book. “You have electricity in the rooms, right?”

     “We even have toilets that flush,” the man replied, laughing jovially. “Of course.” He handed Danny a key. “Upstairs, second door on the left. The bathroom is in the upstairs hall. If the door is closed, please knock before entering.”

     “Thanks,” Danny said, taking the key and heading upstairs.

     The room was shabbier and smaller than the one in the rectory, and the mattress was old and lumpy. Still, Danny felt relieved to be out of the rectory and farther away from the church.

     Farther away from Stefano, whoever or whatever he was.

       
********


	3. Chapter 3

 

     The fire was crackling and giving the dark space a dancing gold light. It was also putting off heat, which they didn’t need more of at the moment. He could barely breathe as they made good use of the time, kissing urgently, deeply, hungrily, savoring the stolen time together. The heat of his lover’s body covered him, their sweat making the friction easier, erections rubbing together. It had been so long, and it was so good. He wanted it to last longer but it was coming over him in waves, and then they were climaxing, almost at the same moment, gasping and shouting each other’s names.

     _Daniel._

_Stefano._

Danny woke, sat up in bed, drenched in sweat, panting, with Stefano’s name on his lips. With come in his shorts. He flopped back on the bed and waited for his pounding heart to settle down a bit. It was a damn dream, that’s all. After talking about their affair, about the cave where they had some of their trysts, his mind just filled in the blanks. Not to mention the fact he had to work hard to remember the last time he’d had sex with Rachel.

     He tried to deny how good Stefano’s overheated body had felt against his, how silky those dark curls were as they’d slipped between his fingers, how those eager lips had captured and conquered his mouth. He got up and made his way stealthily to the bathroom with a clean pair of shorts in hand. Glad no one else was up and about, he washed up, splashed some water on his face, and changed his shorts. He took one last look in the mirror and covered his mouth to stop a scream from escaping.

     Stefano’s reflection was behind him in the mirror.

     And then it was gone. Like a puff of smoke, a shadow, an illusion. He was alone in the small bathroom, and it was clear that he wasn’t playing with a full deck. He forced himself to go back down the short, dark hall to his room. He made up the bed and lay on top of the covers, since the sheets were sweaty. He was glad his shorts had caught most of the come. He really didn’t want to leave that on the sheets, as if he’d been in there jerking off all night.

     As he drifted into a fitful sleep, his dreams were plagued by images of Stefano’s still face and the single tear that had escaped from beneath those long, dark lashes.

       
********  


     Danny paced around the lobby of the hotel in Rome, waiting for Rachel and Grace to return from their Milan shopping extravaganza. Rachel was clever, so he figured she’d have had most of their purchases shipped home instead of showing up with all the bags and boxes. Of course, most of it would be paid for by Mommy and Daddy, not Danny. His budget had been maxed out long before they got there. Another reason he was probably disposable in her eyes.

     “Danno!” Grace’s voice got his attention immediately and he happily grabbed his daughter and scooped her up in a hug as she ran toward him.

     “Hey, Monkey! Did you have fun?”

     “It was great! We went to fashion shows, and I got _six_ new dresses, and shoes to go with them, and--”

     “I’m sure your father doesn’t need to hear all the details, Grace,” Rachel said, forcing a smile, though she looked like she was ready to clamp a hand over Grace’s mouth to stem the flow of information.

     “Six new dresses? Shoes, too?” Danny asked, ignoring Rachel. “I bet you look like a princess in every one of them, too.”

     “We got you a present, too, Danno,” she said, holding up a small shopping bag. And it was small. Small enough for Grace to carry like a handbag. _Don’t spoil me too much, Rachel._ Chances were he only got anything because Grace nagged her mother relentlessly to include getting something for Danny in the retail orgy.

     “You did? Well let’s see it,” he said, setting Grace down and opening the bag, pulling out an expensive pair of leather driving gloves. “These are beautiful,” he said, trying them on. “Did you pick them out yourself?”

     “Mom helped a little,” she admitted, grinning “Do you really like them?”

     “I love them, Gracie. They’re beautiful.”

     “Did you have fun on your bicycle trip?”

     _Yeah, I had some wet dreams and met a good looking corpse._

“Yeah, it was fun. I saw some pretty countryside, stayed at a couple very old inns. Checked out the local history.” _There’s a euphemism for that side trip into the fucking Twilight Zone._

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself, Danny. We should go up to the room and relax a while before dinner,” Rachel said, and the three of them headed for their suite. Danny wasn’t exactly glad Rachel was back, though he was always glad to see Grace, but he hoped their presence would keep the ghost of Stefano off his mind until they could get the hell out of Rome.

       
********  


     Danny packed most of his clothes in his car and took what few possessions he could fit in with them. He’d found a motel that wasn’t in a terrible part of Newark where he could almost afford to keep a room long term and pay the mortgage at the same time. The mortgage on a house he’d strained to buy for his family. He’d been so proud to be able to buy the nice little bungalow with a bedroom for them and a bedroom for the baby Rachel was expecting. It had a nice backyard and though it was small, it was in a safe neighborhood on a tree-lined street close to a good school. Which wasn’t good enough, of course, when Rachel’s parents decided to pay for Grace to go to a private school.

     He and his puny little house weren’t good enough for Rachel, although she was quick enough to throw him out of it and continue living there when she was through with him.

     He’d put off saying goodbye to Grace as long as he could. He’d wanted to do this when she wasn’t home, but then he wasn’t sure if Rachel would give him a chance to visit her and explain what was going on before Rachel put her spin on it. He walked back toward the house, and Grace ran out on the porch and threw her arms around him, hanging on around his middle.

     “Don’t move out, Danno. I don’t want you to go,” she said, crying.

     “I don’t want to go, either, Monkey,” he admitted, trying not to just stand there and cry with her. “Your Mommy and I...we can’t live together anymore, honey, that’s all. We both still love you, and we’re gonna have a lot of fun this weekend,” he said, hoping Rachel would keep up her end of the unofficial visitation agreement they’d hammered out. That her overpriced lawyer had hammered him over the head with, was more like it. “You’ll be busy with school and then it’ll be Saturday before you know it, and we’ll do anything you want.”

     “I want you to stay,” she said, still holding on. He finally knelt in front of her.

     “Sometimes...sometimes things change and we don’t always like those changes, but we’ve gotta be brave and do things a new way...” He swallowed hard. “You are the most important thing in my life, and I love you, okay? That’s not gonna change no matter where I live. And I’ll always be here for you. Anytime you call me, I’ll be here, okay?”

     “Okay,” she nodded, sniffling.

     “Is that everything?” Rachel asked, joining them, putting her hands on Grace’s shoulders. Danny stood.

     “I still have some belongings in the house, Rachel. I’m going to a hotel for now. I don’t have room for everything in a hotel room.”

     “When do you think you’ll have another permanent place? I’m putting the house on the market soon and it will have to be presentable for showing.”

     “My six cartons of stuff in the basement are gonna make it not presentable for showing?” he snapped back. Then he took in a deep breath, remembering that Grace was there, taking it all in. “I don’t know yet, Rachel. As soon as I have a place, I’ll be back for that stuff.”

     “Come along, Grace. You have homework to finish before dinner.”

     “I want to go with Danno,” she said.

     “Grace, we talked about this, remember?” she asked, her overly sweet fake smile in place. “You’ll be spending time with Daddy every other weekend.”

     “I want him to live here,” Grace insisted.

     “I thought you two had a little talk,” she said, shooting Danny a withering look.

     “We did. Let’s not blame Grace for this mess,” he replied, and Rachel looked angry but said nothing more. “I’ll pick you up Saturday, Grace.”

     “Not this Saturday. We said every other weekend, remember?”

     “So why can’t it start this Saturday?” Danny shot back before he even thought about it.

     “I wanna go with Danno on Saturday, Mommy,” Grace whined, moving closer to Danny again.

     “Fine, this Saturday, then,” she conceded, sighing.

     Grace unhappily gave Danny one more hug goodbye and trudged into the house, visibly dejected. Danny wasn’t about to give Rachel the satisfaction of bawling like a baby in front of her, even though he felt like his guts had been ripped out and handed to him.

     “Ten a.m. Saturday, then,” she said.

     “Yeah, fine, whatever,” Danny replied, turning and walking toward his car. He got in behind the wheel and took off in a squeal of tires, not giving Rachel the satisfaction of a backward glance.

     Driving to the motel was difficult, since all the emotions he’d held in were coming out now, and he spent most of the drive blinking and wiping away tears, trying to see the road. He could have stayed with his parents, but they never had liked Rachel, and somehow he couldn’t bring himself to crawl, defeated, back to their house and be the washed up divorced son living in their basement.

     He unloaded his car when he got his motel room key, putting most of his stuff in there. It wasn’t ideal, but he also didn’t want someone breaking into his car and stealing what little crap he had left to begin his new life alone. Without his wife or his daughter.

     He stretched out on the miserable, hard mattress and finally just let himself cry. Nobody was there watching him. He didn’t need to be tough for anyone. He didn’t have to be brave in front of Grace. He was just there by himself in a crappy motel room so he might as well give vent to all the misery he felt. Turning on his side, he let himself sob into the rough, stiff pillowcase on the misshapen pillow that he absently wondered if any real human could sleep on comfortably.

     _Daniel._

     It was a whisper, but a distinctly male whisper, and there was a puff of warmth against his ear, as if someone were right there with him. _Great, I’m alone and fucking crazy, too,_ he thought, not bothering to even look. No one would whisper his name gently and no one would enclose him in the curve of a larger, longer body and hold him while he felt so miserable. He was fucking nuts on top of everything else, imagining that some guy who had been dead for centuries was whispering in his ear and holding him while he cried. As miserable as he felt, he let himself be comforted by the insane illusion of strong arms around him, soft lips on his cheek as he lay there. Before long, he fell into a restless, troubled sleep.

       
********  


     Rachel wasn’t sure what disturbed her. She’d been sleeping soundly, and she didn’t think she’d heard Grace call to her. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock. It was about two in the morning. Deciding she’d check on Grace just to be sure she was sleeping peacefully, Rachel sat up. She froze where she was, unable to stifle the scream that escaped her as her eyes settled on a tall, shadowy figure standing there, staring at her with intense, dark eyes that were an unfathomable color in the darkness of the room. She fumbled with her phone with shaking hands, grabbing it from the night stand to call 9-1-1. She was terrified to look back toward where the man had stood, since she’d had to look away to pick up her phone.

     The room was empty. The tall, dark-haired figure was gone. Not sure if he might be somewhere in the house yet, she followed through with her call to 9-1-1, but she wasn’t sure how she’d explain what she’d seen. It sounded insane to say that she’d seen a man who looked like a Roman gladiator in her bedroom.

       
********  


     Danny woke to the sound of his phone. He raised up on one elbow and answered it.

     “Hey, Danny, this is Joe Tanner.” It was one of his fellow detectives on the line.

     “Yeah, Joe, we got a case?”

     “No, but your address just came up on a 9-1-1 call about an intruder. You said you were moving out this week...”

     “Who made the call?” Danny asked. He was already sitting up, shoving his feet into his shoes. Since he hadn’t bothered undressing when he lay on the bed, it didn’t take him long to grab his car keys and be in motion toward the door.

     “Don’t know. Just heard it over dispatch. We’re on the other side of town on a homicide, so we can't respond,” he said. “At least a couple units are en route and I radioed in that it was a cop’s address, so help’s on the way fast as it can get there.”

     “Thanks, Tanner. So am I.”

     Danny gunned the engine and sped toward the house. He could hear sirens, but he was well ahead of them, screeching to a stop in the driveway and rushing up to the door, gun drawn. Rachel opened it before he had a chance to do it himself.

     “Where’s Grace? Is she okay?” he asked immediately.

     “She’s fine, Danny. She’s in her room.”

     “You called about an intruder..?”

     “He’s gone now,” she said, stepping back for Danny to enter. Two black and whites pulled up in front of the house, uniformed officers rushing up to the door.

     “What did he look like? Where was he?”

     “He was tall, had dark hair, dark eyes...and he was...dressed strangely. Like some kind of...costume,” she said, visibly shaken. “He was just standing at the foot of my bed, _staring_ at me. He looked...angry, like he wanted to...do something to me. But then he must have just left, because I turned to get my phone and when I looked back, he was gone.”

     “Black, white, Hispanic...?” Danny asked.

     “White, with dark curly hair that was quite long. His eyes were...piercing,” she said. The uniformed officers looked to Danny, who had flashed his ID at them.

     “Check the house, the yard, look for any signs of forced entry,” he said. “You two, do the yard and then check with the neighbors. You guys do the house,” he directed, and the four officers split off to pursue their assignments. “What kind of ‘costume’ was he wearing?”

     “I don’t know, exactly, but he looked like...a Roman gladiator or something,” she said, gesturing, frustrated. “It was dark.”

     Danny felt a chill run up his spine. A tall, dark-haired man in a gladiator outfit...

     “Does that mean something to you?” she asked him. At that moment, Grace came running out to greet him.

     “Did you catch the man?” Grace asked as Danny hugged her and kept a hold of her hand as she stood next to him.

     “We will, Grace. There are cops all over the place. He’s probably long gone by now, with all the sirens.”

     “Grace, please wait in your room. I need to talk to your father.”

     “Please can you move back in, Danno?” Grace asked, looking at him pleadingly.

     “Your mom and I need to talk, Monkey.” He kissed the top of her head, wishing he could just say yes, or that he could explain to her it wasn’t his choice, that he would have never left.

     “Okay,” she agreed, disappointed, heading back to her room.

     “You reacted when I mentioned the gladiator outfit,” Rachel said.

     “No sign of forced entry, Detective Williams,” one of the uniformed officers said, returning to the living room where he was standing with Rachel. “All the doors and window seem fine, nothing open, unlocked, or broken.” The young man shrugged. “Is there anybody else who has a key?” he asked.

     “Just Danny’s mother, and I doubt she would give it to anyone. Unless that would be your brother’s idea of a joke,” she added.

     “Matt wouldn’t do anything that would scare you or Grace,” Danny replied, annoyed. “Thanks,” he said to the officer. “Check in with the other team and see if they need any help talking with the neighbors.”

     “Will do,” he said, pausing. “So, it was a guy in a Roman gladiator outfit?” he asked, frowning. Rachel glared at him.

     “Yes, that’s what it looked like. It was dark and I only saw him for a moment.”

     “Hey, there are all kinds of nuts out there,” he said. “Not the strangest prowler I ever heard of. Just last week we picked up a guy in a clown suit,” he added, chuckling as he left to join the other cops.

     “You did this, didn’t you? Set this up so we’d be so afraid I’d ask you to move back in?” Rachel accused.

     “Don’t be ridiculous, Rachel. I wouldn’t risk scaring Grace and if I was going to do that, why would I go to the trouble of having the guy dressed up for Halloween? I think we just spent two weeks in Italy where you saw a lot of artwork with Roman soldiers in it and you had a nightmare.”

     “I did not have a nightmare! I was wide awake!”

     “Well, I’ll take a walk through the house myself and double check everything, and I’ll make sure things are secure, but whoever it was seems to be long gone now,” he said, sighing. “You know I’ll stay if you want me to. On the couch.”

     “That won’t be necessary,” she retorted, still angry, though Danny wasn’t sure why. Apparently because the Roman soldier who mysteriously appeared in her bedroom had the bad manners to leave without sticking around for the cops to get there.

     Danny refused to acknowledge the thoughts running through his head. That he didn’t just imagine Stefano’s presence in his motel room, and that Rachel didn’t imagine seeing a Roman solider in her room. Somehow, he’d fled Santo Stefano, but Stefano had followed him.

     “What is it? Danny, you look white as a sheet.”

     “Nothing. I’m just...it’s been a long fucking day. I’ll go talk to Gracie before I leave. I didn’t have anything to do with this, Rachel, whatever it was.”

     “Whatever...you don’t believe someone was really here, do you?”

     “If he was, I don’t know how he got in.” _Yes I do. He floated through a wall or something. After all, he traveled all the way here from Italy without a fucking plane._

“I did _not_ imagine this,” she insisted, angrily crossing her arms over her chest. “And if you think this cheap stunt is going to change my mind about anything--”

     “No, I don’t. If I wanted to change your mind with a hoax, I’d have pretended to win the lottery,” he replied, heading for Grace’s room.

     “How dare you?” she challenged. “Typical. Throw out an insult and walk away.”

     “I’m not the one walking away here, Rachel! You’re the one who threw me out, it wasn’t the other way around.”

     “Get out. I’ll explain things to Grace. Just leave.”

     “I’m going to say goodnight to my daughter, Rachel. Don’t make a bigger scene than you already have.”

     He knew Rachel was furious, but he also figured she would back off to avoid upsetting Grace. He put on his happy, upbeat face to go talk to Grace, but he wondered how long he could keep up that front when he felt like his life was over as his time with his daughter was being reduced to a part of every other weekend.

       
********  


     Clara looked across the dinner table, visibly worried about her son. Danny was picking at her homemade lasagna, which he usually shoveled into his mouth with gusto. She’d insisted he come home with them and made sure that he wasn’t alone after the judge ruled in Rachel’s favor that she could move to Hawaii with Grace. Matt had spent many nights sitting with Danny in his motel room, trying to keep him from sinking too far into despair after the divorce. They were all worried that, like many depressed cops, one night he’d drink too much and eat his gun. Danny knew his family worried about that, and he wished they wouldn’t. He might be miserable, but if he blew his head off, Grace would have to live with that memory of him, and he wouldn’t do that to his daughter.

     “We’ll have to make some special plans for July,” Clara said, and Danny knew his mother was trying to make the best of a horrible outcome. Danny was going to have Grace for a month in the summer. Clara was the eternal optimist, but it was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to quit trying to polish a turd. There was nothing remotely positive about his daughter moving 5,000 miles away and being raised by another man. One with lots of money who was better able to provide Rachel with the lifestyle to which she was accustomed.

     Danny’s mind wandered back to the first night he’d been away from home, when Rachel had seen a Roman soldier in her bedroom, glaring at her. More specifically, he thought of the presence he’d felt, the comfort he’d felt in the ghostly arms of a man who couldn’t possibly be there. He knew he had to be losing his mind, because he wished for those arms, felt as if they were the only ones that would bring him any peace, make him feel better when his heart was broken in more pieces than he thought was possible.

     “The lasagna’s great, Mom. I just...I’m not hungry. I’m gonna go for a walk,” he said, standing.

     “Why don’t you wait til after dinner and I’ll come with you?” his father offered.

     “Thanks, Dad, but I think I need some time on my own. I’ll be back in an hour or so,” he said, heading for the door.

     “Don’t be too long, Danny. It looks like it might rain,” Clara said.

     “I won’t,” he replied, forcing a little smile for her.

     It was October, twilight, streetlights coming on in the gray shadows. Leaves crunched under his feet, and the bright colors were more subtle, muted without the sun shining on them. He didn’t really keep track of time or distance, he just kept walking. He found himself in a somewhat desolate area, in front of an old abandoned school building. There was still a bench there near the sidewalk from the days when the school was open. He sat on the bench and stared at the sparsely traveled street in front of him. The houses here weren’t very well maintained, the neighborhood not as desirable in the decades since the school closed.

     It had been months since Rachel’s “prowler” showed up, since he’d imagined Stefano with him in the motel. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of the man who haunted his dreams in that time. He occasionally did dream of him, and when he did, they were steamy, erotic dreams he awoke from sweaty and satisfied physically, but somehow more empty and alone in his heart and soul. As if he was having secret trysts with a ghost and then mourning the absence of the man that ghost represented. His dreams were intense and sensual, but he awoke remembering his dream lover’s smile, the undefinable color of his eyes that seemed to change with the light, his tenderness, and the depth of his love and passion, which seemed limitless when it came to Danny. Or, rather, Daniel, as he was called in those dreams. All of it could be dismissed as his own delusion and insanity, if it hadn’t been for that moment when Rachel saw what had to be Stefano’s ghost in her bedroom. Rachel wasn’t hysterical and given to flights of fancy. If she said she saw a Roman soldier in her bedroom, she saw one. Danny could only think of one particular Roman it could be.

     It was all fucking insane. If Rachel ever got wind of what he really believed about her “prowler” or how he really felt about a man who had been dead for centuries and haunted his dreams, he’d be lucky to ever have even a supervised visitation with Grace.

     At times he thought about going back to Italy, to Rome, taking the train to the village, renting a bicycle, and pedaling furiously to Santo Stefano. When he got there he’d shatter the glass of Stefano’s coffin and take him in his arms and awaken him from his trance...sleep...even death...whatever it was, with a kiss. The kiss of a lifetime. A thousand lifetimes.

     And then he’d have to face the reality that Stefano was a weird obsession he’d brought back with him from Italy. A fantasy that haunted his dreams. The real Stefano was dead, or a hoax of some sort.                                                                             

     Going back to Italy would achieve nothing.

     Or would it? Rachel did see something that sounded suspiciously like Stefano not just floating around in her bedroom, but standing there on the night she threw Danny out of the house, _glaring_ at her. Which led him to wonder just what the true nature of what he’d brought back with him from Italy really was.

     He leaned back on the bench and sighed.

     _Going to Hawaii could achieve something._

Danny started, sitting up straight again, looking around. It wasn’t a thought. It was a voice. _Holy fucking shit...I really do have voices in my head. And he knew whose voice it was, and why he was listening to it._

     The voice was right. Grace was everything to him, and she was going to be in Hawaii. She wasn’t being taken to some remote part of the planet where he couldn’t follow her. It was massively inconvenient, and of every destination there was within the 50 States, that was the one that least appealed to him. _Yes, including Alaska, because the cold is much less annoying than the heat and the beach and all the laid back islanders and surfer dudes that populated Hawaii._

If he went to Hawaii, Rachel would have to honor at least as good a visitation arrangement as they’d had in New Jersey. And how could he handle becoming so irrelevant in Grace’s daily life? One month in the summer? The occasional holiday? He eventually would become the irritant, the place she had to go when she’d rather spend the summer with her friends as she got older. The relative she had to write a thank you note to when he sent her a birthday gift.

     And Stan the big shot with all his money and the big house and the fancy cars...that would be her life. Hawaii, the place she’d visited with Rachel to go get to know Stan better, that she couldn’t stop talking about with the sandy beaches and blue water and year-round summer, would be home, not the modest living quarters he could provide in gloomy, industrial Jersey.

     He stood and began walking back toward his parents’ house, a bit more purpose in his stride now. As night fell and the leaves rustled in the darkness, he wondered if Stefano would follow him to Hawaii, too.

       
********  


     “Excuse me?” Rachel stared at him, dumbfounded. Grace was outside, swinging on the swing Danny had hung for her on the branches of the large oak tree in their front yard, waiting for him to take her on their Saturday outing.

     “You heard me. I gave my notice to NPD and I’ve got a job lined up with the Honolulu PD. I start as soon as I get to Hawaii, which should be about a week after you do.”

     “You’re stalking me to Hawaii? For God’s sake, Daniel, really? I’m getting married in a week. It’s over between us.”

     “Don’t call me Daniel,” he snapped back, and she looked startled. He hadn’t dreamed of Stefano lately, but his memory lingered on, and as insane as it sounded, and felt, he missed him. Missed his soft voice putting so much love and passion into the name, Daniel. He forced himself to focus on reality, the here and now. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not stalking you, Rachel. I want to be part of Grace’s life, and if that life is going to be in Hawaii, then that’s where I’m going.”

     “You can’t do this. I’m starting a new life, with Stan--”

     “Good for you. Even Stan doesn’t own Oahu, last time I checked. I can still live there if I decide to. And I decided. I’m gonna be around for my daughter, no matter what that takes. Deal with it. So don’t be thinking you’re gonna shut me out of visitation and limit me to a month in the summer and a holiday here and there. I expect the same arrangement we’ve got now. Maybe better.”

     “We’ll see about that.”

     “You don’t have any grounds to keep me away from my daughter, and you know it, so let’s not do this. I’m not gonna bother you and Stan, but I _am_ going to be part of Grace’s life. I’ve always told her I’d be there for her if she needed me. It’s a little tough to keep that promise when I’m 5,000 miles away.”          

       
********  


     Steve opened his eyes suddenly, blinking, adjusting his sight to the darkness of the hotel room. Though it was still hard to see everything in detail, one thing he could easily pick up on was the fact Catherine was watching him, and even in the shadows, she didn’t look happy.

     “Who’s Danielle?” she asked, leaning up on one elbow.

     “What?” Steve sat up now, remembering the dream, more than a little troubled that while he lay in bed with his girlfriend, he’d been dreaming of making love to a sturdy, blue-eyed blond with a hairy chest, named Daniel. And it wasn’t the first time Daniel had appeared in his dreams.

     “You said her name in your sleep. Unless you said ‘Daniel’, but the way you said it, I don’t think it was a man’s name.”

     “I don’t really remember what I was dreaming about. It could have been anybody, Cath.”

     “Anybody?” She lifted the covers a bit. “You have wet dreams about that many people, Steve?”

     “Look, I don’t know who I was talking about, okay?” He pushed the covers back and got up, heading for the bathroom. “I’m not seeing anyone else so I don’t know who Danielle was, if that’s even what I said,” he added, closing the bathroom door behind him.

     He splashed water on his face and then washed the come off himself and used the bathroom.

     _Fuck, who was Daniel, anyway?_ Steve knew he had certain “tendencies” when it came to liking guys, but his family upbringing and military career didn’t really encourage that. So here he was, in bed with his girlfriend like any good, straight guy should be, and he was dreaming about some blond guy named Daniel.

     Some blond guy that made him feel things he’d never felt before. Some guy who was in another place and time. His clothes, when he was wearing any in Steve’s dreams, weren’t current. Hell, they weren’t even from the last few _centuries._ Half the time it seemed like he was wearing a toga or something. At least for the brief time when Steve left his clothes on him. They made love in and next to a secluded pond of sparkling blue water under swaying trees. They made love in a cave by a fire. Daniel whispered words of love in his ear, and what he felt for him, for that blond stranger that stirred passion in him on a level he’d never experienced...the love was just as heady and overpowering as the desire.

     And it was worlds beyond anything he felt for Catherine. No wonder she was mad he had a wet dream, since he’d failed to perform for her earlier that night. _That_ was typically not his problem, either. He could get it going for his own right hand without much urging, but for his naked, eager, willing girlfriend? Nothing, not even a blip.

     _Because she isn’t Daniel._

     Being with Daniel was peaceful and perfect. It was out the country somewhere, beautiful landscape of rolling hills and meadows, vineyards, an escape from everything chaotic. There were children there, playing outside. Daniel’s daughter, Gratia, with her long brown hair flying in the breeze when she ran and played with the others. Even in that dream world, it felt like he was always torn between love and duty, between staying with Daniel and returning...where? To wherever it was he was supposed to be, which clearly was not the place he wanted to be.

     Like now, in a hotel room in South Korea, on a brief break from the mission of tracking the Hesse brothers. He didn’t want to be here, either. Not really. What he couldn’t sort out is exactly where he wanted to be. He’d left home at sixteen for the Army-Navy Academy, and with the exception of a few holidays at Aunt Deb’s, he really didn’t feel a connection to family, to any one particular home. He felt like a nomad, a man without a country.

     Until he slept, and then even if it was wrong, and even if it was forbidden somehow, he found that sense of home with Daniel, in that beautiful place he didn’t understand. Until he ended up strapping on a sword and riding a horse off to some place he didn’t want to go, feeling as if his heart would break each time he saw Daniel and that beautiful place they shared shrinking into the distance.

     And there was something so fucking dark that was just beyond his reach. Every time he held Daniel, every time they made love, it felt like their last time. He knew what that darkness was, because he’d felt it before. Felt it when Freddie accompanied him on that suicide mission that took his life. It was danger. No, more than that. It was the shadow of death just around the corner. Maybe it was that, maybe losing Freddie that way, having to leave him to die alone among enemies...maybe that had finally pushed him over the edge.

     _You can do this, Steve. You’ve got gladiator blood in your veins, and they didn’t go down easy._

Steve thought about those words, said by Joe White during a particularly arduous part of his SEAL training. He was a superior, a trainer, but he was also a father figure, and he’d been sharing a few rare words of encouragement with Steve. They were rare because Joe wasn’t inclined to coddle his men, and rare because Steve was one of those under Joe’s command who was the least likely to need or want coddling.

     Now the words chilled him, because that was what he was trying to put his finger on. What or who he was in these dreams, and that fit. The clothes, the era, the sword, the rolling hills of a rural village and the stench and bustle of an ancient city...like Rome. Like a Roman gladiator.

     “Fuck,” he muttered, running his hand over his face, freezing for a moment when the face in the mirror wasn’t his. It was his, but it wasn’t. The hair was longer, curlier, framing his face, and he knew the expression of intense concentration, belonged to the reflection, not to him. He was just startled at first, and then convinced he was losing his mind. He splashed more water on his face and then looked in the mirror again. His own reflection looked back and him this time, and he sighed, leaning on the counter, sagging a bit with relief. 

     He left the bathroom and wasn’t entirely surprised to see Catherine sitting up in bed, talking to room service. It was after six, and apparently they were open for breakfast orders. He found some clean underwear in his bag and pulled it on, then sat on the foot of the bed.

     “Sorry this wasn’t such a great time,” he said, not looking at her. He didn’t want her the night before and he didn’t want her any more this morning than he did then. He was obviously losing his fucking mind, in love and in lust with some imaginary blond man in a toga and seeing strange faces looking back at him in the mirror. If it wasn’t so terrifying, it would have been funny.

     “Yeah, well, maybe next time will be better,” she said, but her smile seemed fake.

     “I really am sorry, Cath. For what it’s worth, I haven’t been seeing anyone else.” _At least, not while I’m awake._

“Okay,” she said. “I’m gonna grab a shower before the food gets here.”

     “Yeah, okay,” he replied, not really knowing what else to say. They had a brief break that was supposed to be a hot night in a nice hotel room in South Korea, but it had ended up with a lot of wasted effort and then him having a wet dream and saying someone else’s name in his sleep. He didn’t blame her for being pissed off, although the tension in the hotel room was enough to make resuming the operation to trap the Hesse brothers look like a relief by comparison.

     Once they’d eaten breakfast and Catherine left, Steve dialed Joe’s number. After conferring with him about the next steps on the mission, Steve asked him the question he really wanted to, hoping he could figure out a way to explain why he was bringing it up now.

     “A long time ago, you made a comment to me, to get me motivated...you said I had gladiator blood in me. What did you mean?”

     “That’s just sinking in now, huh?” Joe asked, chuckling, sounding amused.

     “It sunk in then, but I thought you were just talking metaphorically.”

     “You finally had a chance to go through your grandfather’s genealogy research, huh?”

     “No, I haven’t. I didn’t know he did any.”

     “Your grandfather did a pretty extensive research project when he was at Anapolis. Goes to show how competitive the McGarretts are. His military history professor assigned the students to trace their family histories as far back as they could, especially as it relates to military service. It was a semester-long project. One of your grandfather’s classmates traced his lineage back to the Vikings, around 800 or 900 AD. Your grandfather had to one-up that, finding some evidence that linked your bloodline back to ancient Rome.”

     “Some evidence? Does that mean it was proven or not?”

     “Why the sudden urgent interest in your family history, Steve?”

     “I got thinking about it...just wanted to know, I guess.”

     “Your grandfather and his classmate each got scholarships from Anapolis to spend a summer completing their research. John said his father went to Italy, spent a lot of time in libraries there, talking to the locals, and finally ended up visiting some remote little village that actually had a shrine built to one of your ancestors. Apparently he was a high-ranking Roman soldier, probably a general, who converted to Christianity and saved the lives of a lot of people, including children, during the Roman persecution of Christians. That was pretty early on, so he managed to win the battle with the other guy, who came up empty for anything before 800 AD.”

     “Who was the guy at the shrine in the village?”

     “I don’t really remember. I don’t know as John told me that kind of detail. But I think his body was there, lying in state...one of those supposedly preserved corpses.”

     “From the days of ancient Rome?”

     “Yeah, sounded like a hoax to me, too. Anyway, your grandfather apparently came up with good enough evidence that his professor felt it was a valid win between the two students.”

     “It wasn’t anything like ‘Stefano’, was it?”

     “That’s it! Your dad mentioned that, because it’s the Italian version of Steven. Being that was your grandfather’s name, he thought it was pretty interesting that the ancestor he found had the same name. Come to think of it, they named the village after him...Santo Stefano.”

     Steve had been pacing the hotel room while he talked on the phone. Now he sat on the foot of the bed, a little stunned. He could remember Daniel’s voice in the heat of passion, gasping “Stefano” as his body arched and he came.

     “Something’s sparked this sudden interest in ancient Roman history. What’s really going on, Steve?”

     “I have to go,” he lied. “My ride’s here.”

     “Someday, you’re gonna tell me what this was really all about.”

     “Yeah, maybe someday I will. Thanks again.” He broke the connection and tossed the phone on the bed, flopping back on it himself. He felt a kind of ache, loneliness, and desperation that he didn’t know how to solve. Stefano and Daniel, if they were connected to his real family history, had lived centuries ago. They were both long dead and whatever affair they’d had all those years ago was over.

     He wasn’t sure if it was that hopelessness, the impossibility of ever finding the man he’d fallen in love with in his dreams, if it was Freddie’s death, or some combination of that and him losing his fucking mind, but he lay there for a long time and just cried. Men weren’t supposed to cry, least of all Navy SEALs, but this was a kind of soul-deep agony that felt like more than just his own grief. Trying to analyze that thought, he fell into a restless, troubled sleep.

     He was riding, driving the horse to go faster and faster, the rumble of its hooves almost deafening as he cris-crossed fields and narrowly missed trees. His heart was pounding, and he felt fear in a way he’d never felt it before. He passed the pond where he’d made love with Daniel, and now the village was looming in his sight. The horse’s hooves trampled gardens and wove among homesteads until he pulled on the reins to bring it to a stop in front of Daniel’s house. The front door stood open, broken, and Gratia’s small form crouched over a larger, crumpled form, a pool of blood spreading on the stone floor.

     “Daniel!” he shouted, terrified, unwilling to recognize the reality of what he was seeing. Gratia cradled her father’s head in her lap, the open gash in his neck still oozing, though from the blood that soaked her dress and spread to the floor, and the deathly white pallor of his face, it was clear he was dead, that he’d bled out.

     He gathered the lifeless form in his arms and held him, burying his nose in soft gold hair, trying to remember the feel and the scent of his lover in his arms for the final time.

     Steve woke to a scream of agony unlike any other, only to realize it was his own voice. He was shocked to find that he was not bathed in the blood of the man he loved. He was dry, clean, lying on the bed in the hotel in South Korea. Somehow, Stefano’s agony was his now.

     It was Stefano holding the lifeless form of Daniel, suffering the unbearable grief of having been just a few minutes too late.

     But that didn’t make him feel any less grief-stricken. He felt as if he’d lost Daniel, as if he’d loved him all those centuries ago, and the prospect of going on without him seemed unthinkable.

       
********


	4. Chapter 4

 

     “I just feel like all the eyes of HPD are on me and I got nothing,” Danny said, taking a drink of his beer. Meka chuckled, then winced, covering his side.

     “Guess I picked the wrong time to get my appendix taken out,” he said regretfully, drinking from the bottled water he was having while he sat on his porch with Danny.

     “I don’t know why they put me on this case, and then they don’t assign me a temporary partner while you’re out.”

     “Because you’re good, and because you’re gonna look at this with fresh eyes. Everybody knew John McGarrett, respected him, but with that comes biases. Then there’s the thing with Chin Ho Kelly, his former partner. He stood by him, but with the suspicion around Chin for stealing that drug bust money? It cast an ugly shadow on John, right or wrong.”

     “There’s no evidence John McGarrett was anything but a good, honest, career cop.”

     “He was. And we know who shot him and why - Hesse was targeting his son, because Hesse’s brother was killed in his custody.”                                              

     “Yeah, well, finding Hesse isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Sometimes it feels like they gave me this case to watch the haole fall on his face. Or because I’m expendable if Hesse takes me out.”

     “Not too paranoid there, are we, brah?” Meka needled, taking another drink of his water. “I am so ready for a beer,” he added.

     “Soon, my friend, soon,” Danny replied, smiling. “I heard the hot shot son is on his way back here for the funeral. You ever meet him?”

     “No. Chin met him when he was still in high school, but he hasn’t been back to the island since he left for military school.”

     “Seriously? Not even for holidays?”

     “Guess not. He and his sister spent most of their time with an aunt on the mainland. Not sure what was going on there.”

     “That’s cold, man,” Danny said, shaking his head, thinking of his own clannish family who were already lamenting the fact he probably couldn’t make it back there for Christmas this year. “It’s like that scene in ‘A Christmas Carol’ where Scrooge gets left at the school for Christmas break,” he said.

     “I don’t know as his childhood was that bad, but yeah, it’s weird. I don’t know Chin that well, either, so I never really asked him about the whole family set up. Just rumors I’ve heard. More of them flying around since John got shot.”

     “Well, I’ll meet Mr. Special Forces big shot tomorrow at the funeral, I guess.”

     “Whoa, don’t call him that. He’s a Navy SEAL. Army is Special Forces,” Meka said, snickering. “Hey, why don’t you let me cover the funeral for you? I’d like to go anyway, and I’m doing fine, I can leave the house. Then you can go see Grace in her spelling bee thing.”

     “You’re still on sick leave.”

     “Yeah, for another week, but then I’ll be back. Besides, John was an HPD cop, a lot of guys I know are going. And I’ll know more people on sight than you will. Not like I’m going to see action there, just stand around a bit.”

     “True,” Danny conceded. “Okay, if you’re sure. I kind of would like to be at Gracie’s spelling bee. She’s in the final round, going up against kids from three other schools.”

     “See, you gotta be there. I’ll handle the funeral, let you know if anything interesting happens.”

     “Thanks, pal. I appreciate that. I suppose it’s kind of in bad taste to interrogate his son grave side, anyway.”

     “Something tells me you’re not gonna be pulling Steve McGarrett into a dark interview room and putting him under the lights anytime soon. He’s got a lot of clout with some pretty high-up people, at least that’s the rumor I’ve heard. Most of the missions he’s into are some top level classified stuff.”

     “Well, he knows more about his father’s death than any of the rest of us, so somebody’s gonna have to talk to him.”

     “You can have that job, brah. I’m still recuperating.”

     “Thanks a lot,” Danny replied, laughing. “You play the invalid card when it suits you, huh?”

       
********  


     Danny watched with great pride as Grace out-spelled all the other third graders in the competition. He and Rachel had negotiated enough of a truce to sit together at the event, cell phones both working overtime taking photos and video of their daughter. What Danny couldn’t understand was that, quite frequently, Grace seemed to be looking over their heads, toward the back of the gymnasium, as if she were watching someone at the back of the crowd. Finally curious enough, when they stood to give the two finalists a standing ovation - Grace and a boy from one of the other area schools - Danny turned around and scanned the back of the gym. He didn’t recognize anyone, so he momentarily let it go, assuming it was a friend or teacher that Grace recognized. He made a mental note to ask her about it later.

     Unfortunately, the other boy went home with the trophy when Grace misspelled the word “parallel”, but despite her disappointment, Danny was overjoyed at her performance and the fact she was spelling words at a much higher grade level and took one of the top two spots.

     “We’re gonna go out and celebrate,” he announced as they left the gym with her runner-up trophy. Rachel had agreed to let Danny have the post-spelling bee celebration dinner and keep Grace over night, not minding the idea of a “date night” with Stan. Danny had tried not to let the nausea rise at that thought, but he’d been unsuccessful. He told himself to focus on the fact he got some extra time with Grace, and that always made him smile.

     “Celebrate what? I didn’t win,” she said.

     “You beat all those other kids,” he said, nudging her, smiling.

     “I guess I did,” she said, grinning a little.

     “I guess you did, Monkey. And you were spelling sixth grade words.”

     “Except for ‘parallel’,” she said, sighing.

     “Well, look on the bright side. Next year, you’ll remember how to spell it.”

     “I sure will,” she agreed, rolling her eyes.

     Once they were in the car, heading for the restaurant of Grace’s choice, Danny remembered to ask her the question about her wandering gaze during the spelling bee.

     “Grace, was one of your friends, or a teacher or something, at the back of the gym? It seemed like you kept looking back there.”

     She looked nervous a moment, chewing her lower lip. “Nobody was there.” He knew she was lying, and it troubled him why. Who would she be worried about him knowing she saw there? Even if Stan had stopped in to watch a few minutes of it, Danny wouldn’t have been angry about that.

     “Was it Stan?”

     “No. I said, it was nobody.”

     “Gracie, if you were Pinocchio, your nose would have grown a foot. Why don’t you want to tell me who was there? I’m not gonna be mad.”

     “Because it’s a secret.”

     Now Danny was getting worried. Secret friends of little girls often weren’t the kinds of friends you wanted them to have.

     “I’m not gonna be angry. I just want to know who your friend was.”

     “He said it’s our secret for now.”

     “Sweetheart, you need to tell me who was there, and why it’s a secret,” he said, pulling into the restaurant parking lot, but parking at the back of it so they could talk undisturbed.

     “If Mommy knew, she’d call the police. She called the police on him before.”

     “Who?” Then realization dawned. The only man Rachel had called the police on that Danny knew of was the vision of a Roman gladiator she’d seen in her bedroom in Jersey. Stefano... “Did he tell you his name?” he asked Grace. She nodded. “Was it Stefano?” he asked, and her eyes bugged.

     “How did you know?” she asked. “He said I shouldn’t tell Mommy, but that he was my friend, and he would always protect me, when you couldn’t be there. He calls me Gratia,” she said, grinning. “You’ve seen him, too?”

     Danny sat there a moment, trying to debate if he should lie to her, make up some story to cover up the truth of how he knew Stefano’s name, but tell her he wasn’t real.

     But he _was_ real. And he did his best to never lie to Grace.

     “You’re not afraid of him, are you?”

     “No, he makes me feel safe. Sometimes if I can’t sleep at night, I see him, and he smiles at me, I know everything’s okay and I go back to sleep. It’s like when you’d come home from work real late and look in my room and smile at me and tell me to go to sleep.”

     Danny smiled at that thought. He often peeked in at Grace when he’d get home late from work, and when he noticed she was awake and peering back at him in the shadowy room, he’d chuckle and blow her a kiss and tell her to go back to sleep. He missed doing that now, and it was kind of nice to know she missed it, too, although it sounded like him getting home safe and looking in on her was something she counted on to feel safe herself, and for that, he felt sorry and touched at the same time.

     “Stefano was there today?”

     “Yes. Nobody else could see him, but I could. He told me once he followed us here from Rome, and that I should think of him like a guardian angel, and not to be afraid. Who is he, Daddy?”

     “Stefano lived a very long time ago. He was a soldier, and he protected people from some of the bad things the Roman emperors did - like putting people in jail or hurting them because of their religion. He saved lives, including quite a few children. So yeah, he’s like a guardian angel,” he concluded, smiling faintly, finding himself more relieved and happy than he should be that Stefano was still around, that his presence had been as close as across a crowded gymnasium. That he was, in fact, watching over Grace the way he’d watched over Daniel’s Gratia centuries ago.

     “You’re not going to tell me he’s not real, are you?” she asked.

     “No, Monkey, I’m not going to tell you that. I’ve seen him, too, and he’s nothing to be afraid of.” He paused. “Probably best not to mention it to your mom right now.”

     “She’d call the police again,” Grace said, covering her mouth, giggling.

     “She probably would at that,” Danny agreed, laughing.

     _Stefano was there, in Hawaii. It wasn’t over._ Danny leaned back in the seat a moment, still smiling. The increasingly persistent voice in his head that wasn’t quite his own was rejoicing.

       
********  


     Steve opened the Champion toolbox and began sorting through its contents. He’d analyzed the scene of his father’s murder, forced himself to examine the blood stains and bloody footprints, tried to detach from the grief of visiting the scene where he father died. On top of that, the spilled blood of yet another person he loved was reminding him again of the feel, smell, and horror of Daniel’s blood all over Stefano’s hands, soaking into his uniform, only outdone in its awfulness by the whiteness and coldness of his lover’s skin in the state of death.

     He was trying to shake off those thoughts, push aside the dreams and obsessions that his ancestor seemed to be cursing him with, and rise above the grief over the loss of his father, and just before that, the loss of Freddie in North Korea. He leaned on the workbench a moment and took a deep breath. He could do this. His training was all about separating weakness and emotion from duty. He had the feeling Stefano faced that same dilemma, saving the children instead of mourning his slain lover.

     Someone was approaching, about to enter the garage. All Steve’s senses were on alert, and he forgot his own personal unhappiness in a flash as he snapped into action mode, drawing his weapon, ready to confront the intruder. The other man was in his sights in a moment, gun aimed at him, yelling at him to drop his weapon while he shouted the same order at him.

     And then they both froze.

     Steve couldn’t describe the tidal wave of emotions that washed over him in that moment. It was like the present reality and dreams of a past life were colliding, blending, until there was no separating them anymore.

     No separating himself from Stefano and his dreams, loves, and passions. All of which were wrapped up in the man standing before him. Not drenched in blood and cold to the touch, but living, breathing, his blue eyes laser-focused on Steve.

     Steve began to relax his stance, lowering his gun. It didn’t matter what that man did, he couldn’t have fired at him or harmed him in any way, so his gun was useless.

     “Daniel,” he said, as his gun fell from his hand and clattered on the cement floor.

     The man he knew as Daniel looked shaken, startled, and also lowered his gun, but he had the presence of mind to re-holster it. He stared at Steve, wide eyed, moving a bit closer like he had to get a better look at him in the dimly lit garage.

     “Stefano,” he muttered. “But how...you’re...you’re him but you’re not.”

     “I’m Steve McGarrett. Who are you?” Steve finally asked, though he was barely able to resist pulling the man into his arms and never letting go.

     “Detective Danny Williams, HPD. I’m working your father’s case.”

     “You’re alive,” he said, stating the obvious. But Daniel, Danny, didn’t fire back a snappy retort, which Steve had the feeling would be his usual style. In the back of his mind, it was as if Stefano was telling him to watch out for that sharp tongue of Daniel’s, for his biting wit and sarcasm.

     “So are you,” Danny replied, running his hand over his face. “How...?”

     And then Steve couldn’t resist what his instincts were screaming at him to do, and he advanced on Danny and pulled him into a desperate embrace. Instead of fighting it, Danny returned it full force. He buried his nose in that blond hair, the way he had when he held Daniel’s lifeless form in his arms. The words tumbled out that had tortured his soul for countless centuries.

     “Ego autem seram,” he sobbed into the soft strands, holding Daniel impossibly tighter. _I was too late._

     “Numquam est nimis sero,” Daniel replied, his own voice breaking. _It is never too late._

“Mea culpa, mea paenitet,” Stefano whispered. It was the pain that had led him to plunge forward on his own sword, that had destroyed and broken his soul, imprisoned him in his earthly form and kept him from moving on. The horror of being too late, knowing Daniel died because he was just a few minutes behind the soldiers who threatened the safety of the children he protected, that Daniel gave his life for his daughter and the others, and he wasn’t there. That his love for Daniel, their affair, probably brought the attention on Daniel that got him killed. So he’d done time, served centuries imprisoned in his own corpse because he didn’t deserve Daniel, to be reunited with him when it was his fault he was dead in the first place. _My fault, I’m sorry._

“Amorem vitae,” Daniel whispered. “Cunctis diebus.” _Love of my life. Every lifetime._

“Ignosce me,” Stefano asked, pulling back enough to look into Daniel’s eyes. _Forgive me._

     “Nihil est ad ignoscendum,” Daniel replied, smiling touching his face. _There is nothing to forgive._

     Their first kiss was powerful, passionate, almost desperate. Centuries of separation and longing went into that kiss, and the joy of souls reunited.

     Steve stepped back, a little dazed. Danny didn’t look much more coherent.

     “Do you speak Latin?” Steve asked a bit hesitantly.

     “Nope. A little Russian from an undercover assignment involving the Russian mafia, but no Latin. A few scraps of Italian, that’s about it. You?”

     “Some of several different languages, but not Latin. That’s what that was, wasn’t it?”

     “We just licked each other’s tonsils and you’re worried about linguistics?” Danny demanded, his voice rising. Steve dug deep within himself but he didn’t seem to feel the way Stefano felt anymore. But he still felt every pull of attraction to Danny...the way Stefano must have felt when he first laid eyes on Daniel.

     “You know who Stefano is?”

Æ  I always jump strange guys in garages and whisper Latin love messages in their ears. Yes, I know who Stefano is! I saw him in Italy, in that shrine.”

     “You actually saw him?”

     “He looks just like you. Except his hair was longer and he was dead.”

     “I can grow my hair out but don’t hold your breath for the rest of it.”

     “I’ve had dreams...like I was back there...like I was Daniel, his lover.”

     “Me, too. It’s like he was...inside me somehow, calling the shots.”

     “But now I feel...it’s like the first time I’ve been alone in my skin since I got home from Italy.” Danny paused. “When I was there, I swear to God I saw him breathe.”

     “I’ve been through some losses...just recently...but I never felt pain over anything the way he made me feel it about Daniel’s death. It’s like he gave me his feelings. Made me live it.”

     “Thankfully I didn’t have to live through getting my throat cut for the sake of keeping it real, but he’s... _haunted me_. My ex-wife and my daughter have seen him.”

     “Stefano?”

     “Yes.”

     “Wow,” Steve mumbled eloquently, leaning his butt against the workbench. “I still feel something,” he admitted, not looking Danny in the eyes.

     Danny was quiet a few seconds that stretched out like eternity.

     “Me, too,” he finally agreed.

     “The kiss...I know it was them, but...uh...it was okay.”

     “Okay? It was _okay_? That’s how you convince somebody to do it again? Kissing my grandmother is _okay_.”

     “Okay, so it gave me a hard on and if this wasn’t some weird supernatural thing, I would have thrown you on the hood of the car and fucked your brains out. Is that better?”

     “At least it’s honest,” Danny replied. “Assuming you had an army on standby to help you carry that out.”

     “I’d call the Navy.”

     “Whatever.”

     “Would I need reinforcements?” Steve asked, and his little smile and slightly cocky expression triggered every one of Danny’s hot buttons.

     “What makes you think I wouldn’t be the one throwing you on the hood of the car and fucking _your_ brains out?”

     Steve shrugged. “That part’s negotiable,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. It was worth it just to see Danny’s face and watch him stricken speechless, if only for seconds. “So you’re the haole on my dad’s case, huh?”

     “Haole? Coming from you, that’s funny,” Danny said, laughing and shaking his head. He was fucking beautiful when he smiled widely like that, when he laughed, even if it was sarcastic. “Don’t you think we’re kind of ignoring the elephant in the room here?” Danny asked.

     “Yeah, we are. What do you want to do?” he asked.

     “I’m not exactly ready for the hood of the car, either way.”

     “How about a couple beers?”

     “That’d be good right about now,” Danny admitted, looking relieved.

     “Let’s go, then.” Steve picked up the toolbox and started for the door.

     “You can leave that right there. This is a crime scene, and that’s evidence.”

     “It’s my house,” Steve said. “Besides, I brought this with me.”

     “I’m looking at the impression it left in the dust,” Danny countered, looking annoyed. “Now set it back down.”

     “We were making out a minute ago and now you want to squabble over me taking a toolbox with me?”

     “One has nothing to do with the other. Look, I’m sorry for your loss, and I know this whole situation is more than a little bizarre, but this is my crime scene and I can’t let you take evidence out of it.”

     “Fine.” Steve set the box down and moved away from it.

     “Thank you,” Danny said.

     “Don’t thank me yet,” he replied, dialing the governor’s personal number. Within moments, much to Danny’s obvious dismay, he had accepted her offer to run the task force, been sworn in to do so, and picked up the toolbox again. “Now it’s my crime scene,” he said, heading out the door.

     Danny didn’t immediately follow him, but as he loaded the toolbox in his truck, he saw him coming out of the garage, closing the door behind him. Steve paused outside his truck.

     “You still wanna go grab a couple of beers?”

     “Yeah, okay, where?”

     “Follow me. I know a good place.”

       
********  


     Danny sat in his car, dazed by everything that happened. When he had that emotional, passionate moment with Steve, it was Stefano and Daniel reuniting, two souls coming together that should have never been pulled apart. Two lovers who truly could not exist without each other.

     Now that it was over, he was left with an arrogant, pushy, know-it-all who was not Stefano. And he wasn’t Daniel, at least not that one. But Stefano and Daniel had forced them together, and there was still something in Steve’s eyes, odd and mysterious like Stefano’s, that compelled him, drew him in. It was as if the ghosts had left traces of their love and passion behind.

     The honking of a horn startled him out of his thoughts. Steve had pulled out of the driveway and a bit down the road, and now he was gesturing by throwing his hands in the air as if to ask if Danny was coming. He started up the car and followed Steve to the bar.

     *******

     Danny was surprised by Steve’s choice of bars. It was a nice little tiki bar with a Sinatra-esque singer and a small band. As the sun set, they ordered a couple beers and sat a short distance from where the singer was performing.

     “My dad loved this place,” Steve said quietly, taking a drink of his beer.

     “It’s nice. Kind of like a club you might find in Jersey. Except for the whole tiki thing.”

     “That’s kind of the prevailing theme, Danny,” Steve said, smiling. _Fuck, he was good looking when he smiled. And there was this part of Danny that still saw Stefano when he looked at him._

     “Okay, so the singer reminds me of somebody you’d hear in Jersey.”

     “You were in Italy recently?” Steve asked.

     “About eight months ago, now. My ex-wife...well, she wasn’t my ex then...we had this big trip all planned out before she told me she wanted a divorce. So we went ahead with the vacation.”

     “That must have been fun.”

     “Yeah, great family vacation,” Danny replied, shaking his head. “We were touring some of the churches in Rome, and one of the things we saw was one of those preserved saints. It was creepy but kind of interesting. While we were there, this old lady approached me and told me about Stefano, and where to find him, and that he was ‘waiting for me’. The whole thing was bizarre, but the more I thought about it, the more it bugged me. So while my wife and daughter took a side trip to Milan for shopping and fashion shows, I took a trip to Santo Stefano.”

     “Somebody told you to go there?”

    

“That part is kind of bizarre, too. This tiny, really old lady approached me. She was all dressed in black, and she told me to go there, that he was waiting for me. According to what I found out later, Daniel’s daughter lived to be very old, and fit her description.”

     “She obviously didn’t live to be _that_ old.”

     “No, obviously, but it was still strange. At first I figured it was some kind of tourist scam, but I couldn't figure out how they were doing it. I mean, he's been dead what, almost 2,000 years, and he looked as alive as you do. Like he was just sleeping.” Danny paused, looking down at his drink. “The dreams...they're something else."

     "They're intense," Steve agreed, and Danny thought he detected a slight tinge of color in Steve's cheeks.

     "Sexual," Danny mumbled, taking another drink of his beer.

     "Really...It's just hard to sit here and look at you and not..."

     "Not what?"

     "Feel things."

     "It's more than sex," Danny said, finally looking Steve in the eyes.

     "It's like I know now I'm not him, and it feels like he's not here, but I still..."

     "I still look at you and feel what I felt in those dreams. I don't even know you. It's nuts."

     "I need to solve my father's murder," Steve said, and the subject change almost gave Danny whiplash at first.

     "You already know who shot him."

     "I still need to find him, and anybody he was working with."

     "Okay. Obviously you're the Lone Ranger, so I guess you run along and go solve the case with your fancy new task force."

     "I plan on it. But I want you to work on it work me. I need a partner I can trust."

     "A partner? Yeah, thanks, but I have a partner and I'm not crazy about working for some hot shot who thinks he knows everything."

     "I never said I knew everything. Look, the governor gave me jurisdiction, so this can be a request or it can be a directive."

     "Well, here's a directive for you. Go fuck yourself," Danny replied, standing, heading for the door. He half expected Steve would follow him, but he didn't. He also didn't know if Steve would get him fired from a job he badly needed to stay close to Grace. All he could afford was a crummy one-room apartment as it was. If he lost his job, he wouldn't have a roof over his head, and then his chances for spending time with Grace would be even shittier than they were now.

     It wasn't in him to back down on an outburst, so he got in his car and drove toward that one-room apartment, unsure if he wanted to see Steve McGarrett again, or if he was still carrying the torch for a guy who had been dead for 2,000 years and now seemed to be gone for real, reunited with the original Daniel he'd been in love with for centuries.

     And now Danny was left with an arrogant Navy SEAL know-it-all version of him.

       
********  


     Steve stared after Danny as he exited the restaurant. He sure had a fiery temper on him, and he obviously wasn't impressed with the chain of command. Or, more accurately, he wasn't impressed with Steve, his rank, his resume, or even his "command voice".

     "Who was you friend?" Nicky "The Kid" asked as he sat at Steve's table, occupying Danny's empty chair.

     "He's the cop assigned to my dad's case," Steve said. "Thanks for coming to the funeral. I know my dad would have appreciated it."

     "He was a good man, Steve. A good friend. And he had good taste in music, too," he added, smiling, and Steve chuckled faintly. "He must've had a good lead," Nicky said. Steve frowned, confused. "The cop, I mean. You two were having a pretty intense conversation. For a minute there, I thought you were gonna ask him to dance," he joked, smiling widely as his martini arrived. "I go back on in a few minutes. Hope you don't mind if I wet my whistle," he added.

     Steve thought about dancing with Danny. Feeling that warm, firm body against him on the dance floor, taking him home, feeling his naked skin and soft body hair against him while they made love, the way Stefano and Daniel had so many centuries ago. The way it felt, to Steve, as if he'd just experienced a few nights ago in his dreams.

     But Danny wasn't Daniel. Danny was a smart ass, a stubborn cop from Jersey who seemed like the worst possible match for Steve. He didn't even want to work with him, let alone have sex with him.

     "Steve? Steve, you still with me?"

     "Huh?" Steve said eloquently, jarred from his thoughts. "Sorry."

     "Did he have a lead? The cop?"

     "Not yet. Maybe that's why we looked intense. I know who shot my father. But I'm not gonna give up until I find Hesse and his cronies."

     "You'll get 'em, kiddo. Your old man was convinced you could do most anything."

     "He was?"

     "Yeah, he did more than a little bragging about everything you were doing in the Navy. He was real proud."

     "That's nice to hear."

     "Any requests?" Nicky asked, taking another drink of his martini.

     "How about 'My Foolish Heart'?"

     "I don't remember your dad ever requesting that one," he said.

     "I have a few favorites of my own out of Sinatra's songbook," Steve said, smiling.

     "Then you got yourself a deal, kiddo."

     Steve ordered another beer and sat there by himself, listening to the words.

     _The night is like a lovely tune, beware my foolish heart!_

_How white the ever constant moon, take care, my foolish heart!_

_There's a line between love and fascination,_

_That's hard to see on an evening such as this,_

_For they give the very same sensation._

_When you are lost in the passion of a kiss._

_Your lips are much too close to mine, beware my foolish heart!_

_But should our eager lips combine, then let the fire start._

_For this time it isn't fascination, or a dream that will fade and fall apart,_

_It's love this time, it's love, my foolish heart!_

  
********  


     Danny tossed and turned, more disturbed by solitary, dreamless sleep than he ever was by Stefano's presence in his dreams. He'd never felt quite alone since he got back to the States, and while that had unsettled him at times, it was comforting at others, going through the divorce, adjusting to the loneliness that was sometimes overpowering. He didn't exactly miss Rachel, knowing how she felt about him, but he missed Grace every moment. Being a part-time father broke his heart, even if it was just having to sleep in a different house and not being able to tuck his daughter in at night.

     Or look in on her when he got home from work, the way Stefano apparently did in his place. He wondered if Grace would miss Stefano as much as he did.

     Or if they had to miss Stefano at all. Steve was his descendant. When Stefano spoke in his dreams, it was Steve’s voice. Steve’s eyes, Steve’s face, Steve’s body...

     Danny flipped the channels on the TV until he found a true crime show instead of an infomercial. At least that would possibly hold his interest and function like a bedtime story for an insomniac cop, rather than just droning him to sleep with claims of eliminating wrinkles or dramatic weight loss from whatever product the infomercials were selling.

     Two hours later, he was still staring at the TV, having moved on to another case, the third murder he’d analyzed since changing channels. He finally sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed and just sat there, pushing his hair back out of his face. It was almost dawn anyway, so he figured he might as well get up, shower, shave, and get ready to be fired. Or demoted. Or whatever telling the governor’s pet to fuck off was going to earn him.

     Memories of the feeling of Steve’s body against his, that kiss...before long, he found himself standing under the shower, stroking himself, letting the fantasies and reality blend into one erotic, confusing haze of lust, desire, and love.

       
********  


     Steve had spent a good hour perusing Danny’s personnel file. He had an impressive arrest record from Jersey, and he and his partner, Meka Anemoa, had done all right for themselves in the six months they’d been partners. Aside from his personal draw to Danny, choosing him as a partner was a good move. He was focused on his job, and he needed that job to stay in Hawaii near his daughter. He didn’t have a family to answer to so his hours could be as bizarre as need be. He had high scores when it came to marksmanship, a couple commendations...yes, he could definitely do a lot worse than Danny Williams.

     HPD had helped him kill most of his night with giving him access to the records on Danny and a couple other cops, including Meka. He figured he should make it look legit, like he was considering other people, even though all he really wanted was to validate his gut and his obsession and choose Danny. Of course, Danny had already fairly clearly turned him down. He spent another hour or so in a coffee shop waiting for the sun to come up dwelling on that, and how to turn things around.

       
********  


     Danny tucked in his shirt and was putting on his tie when there was a knock at the door. He opened it, surprised to see Steve standing there. It was pouring rain outside, humid and miserable, but he still wouldn’t have had any qualms about making Steve stand outside in it. He showed up unannounced, and while he would probably succeed in getting Danny fired for so colorfully rejecting his job offer, that didn’t mean Danny had to entertain him in his apartment.

     Steve solved the dilemma by walking in uninvited.

     “I had a chance to go over your file,” he said, then he was momentarily distracted. “Gratia,” he muttered, picking up the framed photo of Grace Danny kept on a small table near the door.

     “My daughter, Grace,” Danny said. “Stefano called her Gratia.”

     “Daniel’s daughter.”

     Seeing Steve again reminded him that he wasn’t insane or delusional or, if he was, he had company. There was something reassuring in that, even if he was having to work hard to find something likable about Stefano’s modern-day counterpart.

     “So what about my file?” Danny asked, sticking his hands in his pockets, watching Steve.

     “You have a very impressive record from back in Newark.”

     “Thank you.”

     “Look, Danny, I know I sort of jumped the gun last night with the whole task force thing. Truthfully, I was asking you for all the wrong reasons.”

     “Like what?”

     “Kind of obvious, isn’t it?”

     “Guess I should have known it wasn’t my stellar arrest record, since you didn’t know shit about me when you decided to throw your weight around with you ‘job offer’. Or was that a directive?”

     “You’re not gonna make this easy, are you?” Steve asked, a hint of a smile on his face. _He was fucking handsome as hell,_ that much Danny admitted to himself.

     “Nope,” Danny said, sitting in the lone chair in the room, crossing his legs, then his arms over his chest.

     “The point is that I’ve reviewed your record, and I’m even more convinced you’re the right choice to help me run this task force. Not to mention find Victor Hesse, because that’s my priority right now.”

     “Why me? Why not some other big shot Special Forces guy?” he asked, purposely pushing Steve’s buttons with using the wrong term.

     “You mean Navy SEAL? Because I’ve got no need to recruit from the Army.”

     “Whatever.”

     “You’ve got a strong record, you’re focused on your job, and I have a very bizarre reason for it, but I know I can trust you.”

     “You’re not Stefano.”

     “Yeah, well, you’re not Daniel, either. But something...larger than us brought us together for a reason. Growing up here, I learned to respect the spiritual as well as the physical. There’s no denying that what we share is...unusual.”

     “No arguments there.”

     “That’s progress,” Steve replied, smiling.

     Danny wanted to punch that smug look right off his face.

     “Your captain said you ordered a wire tap on a Fred Doran,” Steve said, opening the folder he’d brought in with him. “How is he connected to my father’s case?”

     “Doran is a suspected arms dealer. When we ran ballistics on the bullet that killed your father, the gun traced back to Doran. So I figure when Hesse arrived on the island, he hooked up with Doran to get a gun.”

     “So Doran might know where Hesse is. Let’s go.”

     “Let’s go? I don’t remember us settling anything.”

     “If someone shot your father in cold blood while you were talking to him on the phone, what _wouldn’t_ you do to nail the son of a bitch who did it?”

     “Can’t think of too much,” Danny admitted.

     “That’s why I’m pulling rank on you. I need help from someone I can trust who knows what he’s doing. You fit the bill. Whatever else is going on between us...or maybe more accurately, _not_ going on between us, we can sort that out later. This isn’t exactly a demotion. I’m hand-picking you out of every cop at HPD to join an elite task force that’s going to have full immunity and means, backed up by the governor.”

     “Yeah, but the thing is, guys like you who think you know how to do everything better than everybody else? You just make my job harder. I have a partner, I’m fine where I am, and I already said ‘no thanks’ last night.”

     “That wasn’t exactly what you said,” Steve reminded him, again with that little grin. Then he got serious when Danny didn’t respond or move. “You don’t really have a choice, Detective. The governor gave me jurisdiction, and I’m making you my partner. We’re gonna get along great,” Steve said, apparently trying to add some levity to the smackdown he’d just given Danny, finally pulling rank on him without more room for negotiation. Danny could walk away, but he’d walk away unemployed. And that annoying part of him that didn’t want to walk away from Steve seemed to be calling the shots. With a couple muttered curses under his breath, he grabbed his gun and his car keys and followed Steve out the door.

       
********  



	5. Chapter 5

 

     Steve learned a lot about Danny in their first couple of days together. He learned that Danny was brave, resilient, smart, feisty, emotional, hot-headed, and argumentative. He also learned that Grace was the light of Danny’s life, much like he remembered Gratia being Daniel’s pride and joy in his dreams; that is, when his dreams didn’t involve passionate lovemaking and little thought of family or children. Danny had been through a rough divorce and was still battling with his ex-wife over custody and practically everything else. He’d left a job and a home he loved and traveled 5,000 miles to be a father to Grace. Even if he had to do it at the visitation whims of his ex-wife.

     There was an underlying kindness and gentleness to Danny that Steve had a feeling was something you earned access to over time. He wanted into that club. For some reason, it was imperative to him that Danny liked him, that he gained that trust and got under Danny’s skin. He knew they had physical chemistry. Even though that kiss had been Stefano and Daniel, he could still remember how perfect it was, how Danny tasted and how his body felt pressed against Steve’s. Maybe he could even convince Danny to scratch that itch, for them to have a hot, intense, physical _thing_ to burn off some stress and enjoy themselves.                       

     As appealing as that was, it felt as if winning that would mean losing something far greater, and if Steve was anything, he was results-oriented. He liked to achieve the big win. Go big or go home.

     Reuniting with Chin Ho Kelly had proven to be a fortuitous moment, because Chin was not only an essential quarter of their four-person team, but he’d introduced them to his cousin, Kono. Steve knew talent when he saw it, and if she was that good in the police academy, she was going to be phenomenal with a little growth and additional training.

     He’d done what he set out to do. Hesse was gone, presumably drowned, and while that didn’t bring his father back, it did give him a measure of justice. Danny no longer seemed to be resisting his new role as Steve’s partner, though Steve found himself wondering how long it would be before he’d accept being called “Danno” and when Steve would get to finally meet Grace. He felt as if he knew Gratia already, and it was insane to “miss” someone you never met, but that’s how he felt.

     Danny was living in a pathetic little apartment, but Steve couldn’t very well invite him to move in, even though the thought of filling up that empty house where he’d just had a cleaning service come in to scrub his father’s blood off the floor, was appealing. So he’d settled for giving Danny the gift card for a weekend at a resort, and he’d seen a little crack in Danny’s armor. It didn’t surprise him that Grace was Danny’s soft spot. Daniel had given his life to protect Gratia and the other children he’d taken in. Steve had no doubt Danny would do the same in the same situation.

     The thought made him shudder.

     It was a quiet Sunday evening, and Steve was sitting out by the ocean, watching the sunset.

     “You look thirsty.”

     He’d recognize that voice anywhere, in this lifetime or however many came before it.

     “You drop Grace off back home already?” Steve asked, smiling as Danny sat in the other chair and handed him a beer out of the six pack he’d brought with him.

     “Yeah, Sunday’s a school night. Gotta have her home at a decent hour,” he replied, and Steve chuckled. That was obviously a Rachel edict Danny was quoting.

     “How were the dolphins?”

     “She had a great time,” Danny said, smiling widely at that question. “I have pictures,” he continued, taking out his phone. “Start here.” He handed it to Steve, who scrolled through the pictures. He wasn’t sure what caught his attention more - the happy little girl posing with the dolphins and during various resort activities, or Danny in swimming trunks. On second thought, he knew exactly which one he was most enjoying.

     “Looks like fun. I’m glad you guys had a good time.” He handed the phone back to Danny.

     “Yeah, we did. Thanks again. Beats pizza and a movie and sitting around that crummy apartment. Kind of hard to compete with a gated mansion with a swimming pool, tennis court, and ocean views.”

     “That’s not what’s most important to her, Danny. Trust me on that one. Not that we had gated mansions or anything when I was a kid, but hanging out with my dad... Just trust me, spending time with you is what she’ll remember.”

     “Well, it’s still nice that she could do something fun while she was with me.”

     “Have you thought about how you’re gonna explain the whole Stefano thing to her? She’s gonna notice the resemblance when she meets me.”

     That made Danny smile as he sat there drinking his beer and looking out at the water. Steve thought maybe he’d assumed too much. It hadn’t occurred to him that he _wouldn’t_ meet Grace, and that he wouldn’t keep building his relationship with Danny.

     “Not that I’m trying to rush anything,” Steve muttered.

     “What? No, you’re not. I want you to meet her. I was just thinking about how that conversation is gonna go, and I’m glad I’m having it with an eight-year-old.”

     “How’s that?” Steve asked, smiling.

     “I’m picturing telling my ex-wife that you’re not actually a 2,000 year-old Roman soldier’s ghost - or incorrupt corpse, whichever option you want to choose - you just look exactly like him because you’re his descendant.”

     “If you do tell her, I promise I’ll visit you in the psych ward.”

     “Gee, thanks,” Danny replied, laughing. “Grace will be fine with it. I’ll just tell her the truth, and she’ll handle it.”

     “Too bad we over complicate everything when we grow up, isn’t it?”

     “Tell me about it. Although I don’t think I’d want to go through childhood again.”

     “You had a bad one?” Steve asked, again blurting out a personal question and worrying later it was too personal. Oh, well, it was out there now.

     “No, it was fine. I just mean every phase of life has its shit to get through.”

     “I suppose.” Steve took in a deep breath and just said what had been on his mind since they wrapped up nailing Hesse. “I want to go to Italy.”

     “Excuse me?”

     “I think we should go to Italy.”

     “Wait a second. Which is it? You want to go or you want us to go?”

     “I want us to go. You can show me Santo Stefano - the town and the shrine. I need to see where this all started. You’ve seen it all, heard all the local history. It’s still not real to me. I want to see it.”

     “How’s the governor going to feel about you taking off for Italy after you just launched the task force?”

     “I’ll tell her I have some personal issues to clean up before I commit myself completely to the task force. A week should do it. I just want to see the sites, the history, first hand.”

     “Okay. I’m game. When do we leave?”

     “Tuesday work for you? I, uh, kind of got tickets.”

     “How do you kind of get tickets to fly to Rome?”

     “Well, can you go then or not?” Steve persisted.

     “Yeah, sure, I guess. Next weekend isn’t my weekend with Grace anyway, so besides that and the job, my schedule’s clear.”

     “Then it’s settled. We leave Tuesday at six in the morning. So we’ll need to be at the airport by about four.”

     “I don’t suppose they had any other flight time?”

     “Why, what’s wrong with that?”

     “How did I know you were gonna say that? Fine. You want to just meet there?”

     “You might as well pick me up.”

     “I might as well pick you up? Gee, it’ll be my pleasure.”

     “You prefer to drive separately?” Steve replied, sarcastic. _Danny could be such a prick sometimes._

“You could pick me up.”

     “I could, but my place is closer to the airport, so it makes more sense for you to come here than me to go there.”

     “By what, a couple miles?”

     “Fine, I’ll drive.”

     “No, on second thought, I’ll pick you up.”

     “What’s that supposed to mean?”

     “I’ve seen you drive.”

     “Are you always this difficult?”

     “I’m not being difficult! I’m trying to be logical.”

     “That’s what this is, logic? I’m glad you told me because it would have gone right over my head,” Steve said, gesturing over his head.

     “I should have just hung out at Rachel’s. I could have fought with her and saved myself the beer money and the extra gas of coming here.”

     “You could have put all that extra gas toward driving me to the airport,” Steve retorted, taking another drink of his beer. “Geez, Danny, I’m paying for the plane tickets and the hotel.”

     “It’s your idea to go, why shouldn’t you?”

     “Why shouldn’t I? You’re joking, right?”

     “I’ve been to Italy. You’re the one who decided we should go back there so I can be your tour guide to the famous corpses of rural Italy.”

     “If this is what Stefano put up with, I’m surprised he didn’t throw himself on a sword a whole lot sooner. It would have been less painful.”

     “Their story is very tragic, Steven. You shouldn’t make a joke out of it,” Danny said.

     “You’re afraid of ghosts now? And you just cracked the ‘famous corpse’ joke, so don’t hang this all on me.”

     “No, I’m not afraid of them,” Danny replied sharply, “but I do respect them and what they went through. I felt what Daniel felt. Obviously, Stefano was like a bad head cold you just wanted to get rid of, and you didn’t pay any attention to him at all, or how he felt.”

     “That’s not true. I felt things. A lot of things. I know how he felt about Daniel.”

     “Well, then, his suicide isn’t really funny, is it?”

     “No, I suppose it isn’t. I stand corrected. About that. I stand by everything else.”

     “Fine.” Danny stood and started to walk away.

     “Hey, where are you going?”

     “Where am I...? Home, where I can have some peace and quiet.”

     “That’s kind of funny coming from you.”

     “What do you care where I’m going? I’d hate to have you throw yourself on a sword over me.”

     “Now who’s making a joke out of it?”

     “I’ll see you in the morning.” Danny kept walking.

     “I’m sorry, okay? Now will you just sit down and finish your beer and stop being so dramatic?” _Fuck, I’ll pay for that. I should have left off the “dramatic” comment._

“Dramatic? How am I being dramatic?”

     _Here we go,_ Steve thought, sighing.

     “Look, I’m tired and not in the greatest mood. I didn’t really mean it.”

     Danny stood there a moment as if he was totally thrown by the curve ball of an apology instead of more arguing.

     “Yeah, well, I guess you’re entitled,” he conceded, sitting down again. “Hasn’t been all that long since your dad...” he let it trail off. _Hasn’t been that long since Freddie Hart, either, or since a 2,000 year-old Roman fucked with my head and made me fall in love with some obnoxious male cop from Jersey. It’s been a rough month._ “Meka said you really hadn’t been home since you left the Island at sixteen for military school.”

     “That’s right.”

     “What about holidays?”

     “What about them?”

     “Not even for Christmas?”

     “I usually went to my Aunt Deb’s place. Mary, my sister, was living with her. Sometimes my dad came there.” Steve looked over at Danny, who seemed troubled by that. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Big family gatherings with relatives all over the place for Christmas and Thanksgiving.”

     “Pretty much,” Danny replied, chuckling. “Big Italian-Irish family. We’re clannish if nothing else. Well, we’re also loud and we eat and drink a lot when you get us all in once place.”

     “I can picture it,” Steve said, smiling. He noticed that had made Danny give him the fish-eye. “That wasn’t an insult. Sounds like fun.” Steve tried to keep the trace of melancholy out of his voice, but he wasn’t sure he’d succeeded. Judging by the softening of Danny’s expression, he’d failed miserably.

     “You might live to regret those words. Next major holiday, if I can swing it and Rachel hasn’t upped the child support demands, we’ll go spend it with my family in Jersey. If you survive, you’ll be an honorary Williams.”

     “Really?” Steve asked, a little floored that Danny was actually offering to take him home and make him part of his family. Just like that.

     “Sure, why not? Of course, given my financial situation, we might wind up eating hot dogs at my place and watching football instead.”

     “I’ve had worse holidays,” Steve said, and the answer seemed to touch Danny, because he got that soft little smile on his face at that, and he didn’t give him a snippy retort.

     “I probably won’t get Grace on Thanksgiving or enough of Christmas to take her out of town. I really had to bargain to get her last Christmas Eve.”

     “Well, at least we won’t be sitting around moping alone. We can sit around and get drunk together.”

     “Won’t be a total loss then,” Danny agreed, his smile widening. “I should head home. It’s getting late. I’m assuming we’re still working normal hours tomorrow?”

     “Yeah, we’ve got a few things to take care of before we take off. We’ll knock off a little early tomorrow to pack and get some rest.”

     “Okay. I want to swing by and say goodbye to Grace. I know it’s only a week, but...”

     “That’s okay. I get it.”

     After Danny left, Steve sat out by the ocean long after it got dark. He had no real desire to go into the empty, dark house. Somehow, that was lonelier than sitting out here by the water. Still, he had an early call in the morning, so he finally got up and headed back inside.

       
********  


     “If you ever run into my ex, we went on a confidential assignment related to the task force,” Danny said as he fastened his seatbelt for the plane to take off. Steve was seated next to him, on the aisle, already restlessly trying to figure out where his long legs were going to make themselves comfortable for the several hours they were stuck on the plane.

     “Why did you tell her that?”

     “If you ever meet Rachel, you’ll understand. Plus, what am I gonna tell her? If either one of us told the truth about this trip, we’d probably be locked up.”

     “You have a point,” Steve replied, shrugging.

     “You usually fly first class?” Danny finally teased.

     “Military planes or helicopters. Not as fancy but more leg room,” he said.

     “Ever been married?” Danny asked.

     “No.”

     “Married to the job, huh? Yeah, I was, too, to hear Rachel tell it. That’s part of her issue, I guess.”

     “There’s a high divorce rate among cops. A lot of the guys my dad knew ended up divorced.”

     “But your parents stayed together.”

     “Until my mom died, yeah. Who knows if it would have lasted forever, you know?”

     “They must’ve been together almost 20 years. That’s a good running start.”

     “Yeah, 18 years I think.”

     “I think Rachel could have coped with me being married to my job if my job brought in seven figures a year.”

     “You think money was the big thing with her?”

     “You haven’t seen the house she’s living in now, or you wouldn’t ask. The best I could manage was a two bedroom bungalow in Jersey.”

     “Doesn’t sound all bad,” Steve said, and Danny looked at him, surprised. It was an odd comment. “I guess after you’ve spent so much of your life traveling around alone, the house isn’t the thing you’re looking for to call home.”

     Danny was quiet a few seconds, taking that in, not sure how to respond. _Did Steve mean that sharing a two bedroom bungalow with him didn’t sound bad, or that he’d just like to not travel as much?_

“I guess it’s all in the priorities,” Danny added, knowing it was a lame reply but not sure what else to say.

     “I really want to meet Grace,” Steve said.

     “I just didn’t want you to meet her in front of Rachel. Be a little tough to explain when she calls you Stefano.”

     “I suppose,” Steve agreed, chuckling. “I hope she’s okay with the difference.”

     “She’s a smart kid. She will be. Now Rachel, I’m not so sure.”

     “Why do you think Stefano showed up there, to scare her? Check her out, what?”

     “Daniel's wife was already dead when he met Stefano, so maybe Stefano wanted to get a look at Gratia’s mother, or maybe he just wanted to get a look at the woman I was all fucked up about.”

     “You were all fucked up?”

     “More about not living with Grace anymore. It was the first night moving out of the house, and...this sounds nuts.”

     “Nuttier than the rest of it?”

     “I was pretty upset, miserable...staying in this crummy motel. It felt like Stefano was there, with me.”

     “He probably wanted to help somehow,” Steve said. “After all, you were carrying Daniel around inside you.”

     “You make it sound like I was having his baby,” Danny replied, and Steve laughed out loud at that. Danny couldn’t remember ever seeing or hearing him do that before, but it was a nice sight and a happy sound. He smiled, thinking it would be fun to make Steve do that more often. The guy was serious to the point of being brooding at times, and Danny figured there was plenty of tragedy and hardship weighing on his mind to make him that way. Or maybe just a lot of ugly battle action. Guys like Steve saw and did things that weren’t really compatible with blending back in to regular civilian life.

     “I guess you’re right,” Steve admitted, still grinning.

     “I’m not Daniel anymore,” Danny said quietly, glad there were only two seats on this side of the aisle, that they could have their bizarre conversation without including a nosy third party. “But I still...feel some of his feelings.”

     Steve looked at him for a long moment and then looked away. “Yeah, me, too,” he said, so quietly Danny could barely hear him.

     “It’s like...a ghost of a feeling, if that makes sense.”

     “Exactly.”

     “You don’t seem much like Stefano, except for the obvious,” he said, gesturing at his own face to indicate the physical resemblance.

     “You don’t know me the way Daniel knew Stefano, so how do you know?” he asked, seeming a little hurt by the statement.

     “You don’t know me the way Stefano knew Daniel, either, so what makes you think I’m like him?”

     “Because there’s some reason that after all these lifetimes, we’re the ones who broke them out of their...traps, I guess you’d call it.”

     “You look like him.”

     “You look like Daniel, but it can’t be just that. That would be like...some genetic accident.”

     “I suppose it would. Be nice to think it was something more.”

     “Yeah.”

     The flight was fairly uneventful, and they passed the time either napping or visiting, talking more about their childhoods and careers. Steve was predictably tight-lipped about a lot of his work, but Danny did learn about Freddie Hart, and though Steve didn’t elaborate on the mission or allow himself to linger over the emotions connected to it, it was clear that Freddie’s death had contributed a lot to that brooding. His best friend and his father both killed within a short time of each other, his mother dying when he was a teenager...Steve was no stranger to loss. That made Danny feel more at ease, and he told the story of Billy Salwey. Somehow, given Steve’s own recent loss, he had a feeling he would understand. Someday, when he felt up to it, he’d tell Steve about Grace Tilwell, and the ill-fated, ill-conceived “raid” they’d conducted with no backup that ended in her death as the Towers fell.

     It was evening in Rome when they arrived by taxi at their hotel. Danny wasn't sure what to expect when Steve made the reservations. It didn't surprise him they weren't booked into the same lavish hotel where he'd stayed with Rachel and Grace, but he was pleasantly surprised by their destination. The hotel was right next to the Pantheon, overlooking the Piazza Della Rotonda.

     “Wow, great location,” Danny muttered as they got out of the taxi and helped the driver unload their bags. Steve only had one large duffle he’d carried on the plane, while Danny had a carry-on bag and one suitcase. Steve had eyed the suitcase with a bit of disdain when they’d left Hawaii, and Danny could imagine he thought it was more luggage than was needed. After all, how much luggage did you need for a couple shirts, a couple t-shirts, and a change of cargo pants? Danny had been a bit disappointed by Steve’s lack of luggage, since that was a certain indicator that no fancy restaurants or “date nights” were going to be part of this trip. Yup, that’s right, all business to go biking back out to Santo Stefano.

     Steve approached the front desk in the quaint hotel and inquired about their reservation. It was an elegant place, clearly old, though by Roman standards it was probably considered recent. Danny figured it was 19th century architecture. Considering its next door neighbor, it was new construction.

     “But I booked a double room,” Steve argued with the desk clerk, which drew Danny’s attention away from the interior structure and decor of the hotel to their conversation.

     “Yes, sir, you did, and you have a double room with a king bed.”

     “In what language does a double room mean one bed?” Steve retorted.

     “Italian, apparently,” Danny added, sighing. “Just book us in a different room, then,” he said to the young woman behind the counter. She had long, thick dark hair and big brown eyes. A nice shape, too. He gave her his best charming smile. “Maybe you could shift something around with another double room reservation? We’d really appreciate that.”

     She smiled back, and his ego was boosted by the fact that his charm seemed to be working on her.

     “I’m so sorry,” she said, rechecking the computer. “All the rooms with two beds are booked and the guests have checked in,” she explained. “I couldn’t shuffle things around even if I tried,” she said, smiling apologetically at Danny.

     “It’s late to go look for another hotel. Can you deal with this?” Steve asked.

     “Yeah, no big deal. We’ll be heading out tomorrow anyway,” he added.

     “Okay. We’ll take it,” Steve confirmed, and the desk clerk took his credit card and completed the reservation. Once they had their room keys in hand, they headed up to the second floor.

     “Nice hotel,” Danny said. “I like the staff already.”

     “She’s probably a college student, Danny,” Steve said, shooting him a look as he stopped at their door and unlocked it.

     “So? She’s legal and I’m not exactly a grandfather. What’s your point?”

     “Nothing,” Steve responded, going into the room, followed by Danny. It was a beautifully decorated room with the king size bed right in the middle of it, a couple nice wingback chairs, and a balcony that was right next to the Pantheon. Steve went out on the balcony, as if he were drawn there. “I wonder how much time Stefano spent there?”

     Danny joined him, absurdly feeling that if he was on that balcony with Stefano, they’d be in a heated tangle of anxious limbs, stumbling back into the room, onto the bed, making mad, passionate love until dawn. Until something forced them to separate. Danny had a feeling they spent a lot of their time in forced separation, and it made him sad to think of that.

     “You miss him, don’t you?”

     “Who?” Danny asked, though he knew what Steve meant. Under the intense gaze of those color-changing eyes of his, Danny relented and admitted it. “I guess I do.”

     “And I’m not him,” Steve said, sighing.

     “I’m not Daniel, either,” Danny said. “We had this conversation on the plane.”

     “I can’t be something I’m not, Danny. I don’t know why Stefano stuck me with...left me feeling...”  He shrugged. “I’m jet-lagged. Don’t know what I’m talking about. You want the shower first?”

     “No, you can go. Something tells me you’re quicker in there than I am.”

     “The hair alone,” Steve joked, though it was gentle, and he reached over and lifted a strand that had fallen on Danny’s forehead in the evening breeze. “Yeah, I’m pretty quick,” he said, seeming to remember that he wasn’t Stefano and that’s who Danny was missing. He went back into the room, and Danny sat on one of the chairs on the balcony while Steve headed for the bathroom to shower.

     Danny finally went back in the room and closed the balcony doors. He started picking through his suitcase for a few supplies. Steve walked out of the bathroom, towel around his hips, still damp from the shower. His muscles were a little more pronounced and defined than Stefano’s, and the tattoos weren’t there on Steve’s ancestor, but there was something embarrassingly familiar about that nearly naked body that made Danny look away and focus on his clothes.

     “What are you gonna do with that while we’re traveling to Santo Stefano?” Steve asked, gesturing at the suitcase.

     “I can take it on the train.”

     “You gonna strap it on the back of your bike, too?” Steve asked with a little grin.

     “I figured we’d leave most of our stuff at the bed and breakfast place in the village while we’re in Santo Stefano.”

     “We’ll stay over in Santo Stefano, probably one night, anyway. So you’re gonna pay for a room for your suitcase overnight?” Steve had that irritating little smart ass smirk on his face. _Fuck you, you, asshole. You looked like Stefano for half a second before you turned back into a smug dick._

“It’s not like it’s a bustling place. They can probably store it for me overnight.”

     “Yeah, ‘cause that’s safe. No risk of theft or anything.”

     “It’s not New York City, Steve. These are little old Italian ladies cooking dinner from scratch and crossing themselves if you mention something holy or unholy. I’m never sure what triggers them doing that more, but you know what I mean. It’s not a high crime area.”

     “Okay. Just wondering what the plan was,” Steve added, looking as if he knew he’d ruffled Danny’s feathers again. Danny wasn’t sure why he kind of regretted being so snappy with him. Steve was annoying as hell, and he wasn’t Stefano. He never would be. He’d always be Steve, some modern substitute for Stefano, who was in love with Daniel, not Danny. Stefano, who was somehow reunited with Daniel, and had no problem leaving Danny when that happened. He hated that those thoughts were making his eyes fill a little, so he blinked and gathered up his supplies and headed for the bathroom. He was surprised his smart aleck roommate didn’t make some remark about the toiletries or the hair products.

       
********  


     Steve pulled a t-shirt over his head and stepped into a clean pair of shorts. He turned back the bed and got in, stuffing a couple pillows behind his head and turning on the TV. He was kind of hungry, but it was beyond room service hours and he hadn’t packed anything in his bag other than a few provisions for their biking trip. He couldn’t really eat those up now and still be prepared for that excursion. He was starting to doze when Danny finally emerged from the bathroom. The towel was slung low on his hips, so low that Steve expected it to fall at any moment as it tantalizingly clung to the presumably moist, perfect, rounded ass beneath it. His hair was perfect again, and Steve thought of making some remark about that, but he thought better of it. Somehow he seemed to have a knack of annoying Danny when he teased him, and he'd had enough of feeling Danny's irritation for a while. It hurt more than it should, but he couldn't help how he felt.

     And Danny smelled so fucking good. He'd used some nice smelling soap or gel or something, because the scent was in the air from the open bathroom door, but it also smelled like he had a light splash of cologne on, too.

     Just like that, as if he'd forgotten Steve was even there, he took off the towel and tossed it on a chair, standing there naked, slightly bent forward to pick through his suitcase. Steve was glad Danny wasn't watching him, because he found himself staring, feeling his tongue involuntarily peek out to lick his lips just a bit at the thought of touching and tasting that dewy skin and soft body hair, what it would feel like for their naked bodies to come together like Stefano and Daniel had all those centuries ago. How perfectly that nice, round ass would fit in his hands, or how it would look surrounding his dick...

     Danny found a pair of shorts and stepped into them, then put a tank shirt on. Steve barely averted his eyes and stopped leering before Danny turned around. He had a bag of trail mix in his hand. That was almost as arousing to Steve in his hungry state as Danny's naked body had been to his libido a few seconds earlier.

     "Hungry?" he asked. Steve wasn't sure if he could really be oblivious to the show he'd just put on, but he seemed completely unaware that he'd just given Steve the beginnings of an erection he was bunching up the sheet over him to cover.

     "Starving," Steve admitted. Danny chuckled at that and tossed the little bag at Steve, taking another one out for himself. He gathered up two bottled waters that had been provided with the room, turned out the lights except for the ones on their night stands, and climbed into his side of the bed. He handed a water to Steve. "Thanks."

     "See, that's why you bring a suitcase," Danny teased, opening his bag of trail mix.

     "I see the benefit now," Steve said through a mouthful of the food. It was just some nuts, raisins, and little candies, but it tasted better than a steak dinner as it started to sate his hunger. At least the hunger his stomach was experiencing. The hunger that was keeping his unwanted boner going was another issue altogether.

     "What are we watching?"

     "Soccer, I guess. It's the only thing I understand that I found so far," Steve said. "Be my guest if you want to look around," he put the remote in the empty space between them on the bed.

     "Nah, I'm good. Probably won't be awake long anyway," Danny said.

     "Me neither," Steve agreed, though he wished he could relax himself by jerking off and getting rid of the results of ogling Danny in all his naked glory. Lying there munching snacks and watching soccer, he could picture being with Danny for the long haul. Having someone to just be at home with, someone he loved, who did silly little things like sharing snacks with him and watching bad television together until they dozed off...Steve had been alone a long time, and finding someone to love and live life with...it was a nice, warm thought.

     "What? Am I dropping nuts in the bed or something?" Danny asked, noticing now that Steve was staring at him instead of the television.

     "No, I was just thinking. Glad you thought of the food," he added, knowing it was a lame excuse, but Danny seemed to accept it, or was letting him off the hook, anyway.

     "Yeah, well, when you get somewhere late, room service is usually closed and going out isn't fun when you're half asleep on your feet."

     Danny fell asleep before Steve did, and by then, Steve's unruly cock had also deflated and seemed to be ready for rest. Finally, Steve turned out the light by his bed and then the TV.

     "Hey, I was watching that," a groggy voice said from where Danny’s face was partially buried in the pillow. Danny had shifted onto his side, facing Steve.

     "Your eyes are still closed, Danny. You're not watching it."

     "I can't sleep without the TV on," he grumbled, opening his eyes to slits.

     "I can't sleep with it on," Steve argued.

     "Just turn it down a little and close your eyes." Danny resettled himself, apparently considering he'd settled the argument. "Turn it back on, Steve," he grumbled.

     Steve stared at him a moment. "What's with you and the TV?"

     Danny sighed, sounding pained. "I have insomnia. The TV puts me to sleep."

     "How do you stay awake all day if you don't sleep all night? I never really knew someone with insomnia."

     "Well, congratulations, you know one now," Danny said, looking grumpy as he rubbed at his eyes.

     "Did you leave the TV on when you were sleeping with your wife?"

     "Sometimes I slept on the couch, because I'd get in late and she didn't want me to wake her up, and sometimes I just didn't get much sleep. Other times..." he began, seeming a little embarrassed. "Sex puts me out like a light."

     "So it's sex or TV?"

     "Turn on the TV, Steven," Danny said sternly, as if to set the record straight that sex was not going to be an option that night.

     "Just asking," Steve said, giving up and turning on the TV. It really wasn't going to keep him awake. He was exhausted, and before long, asleep.

       
********  



	6. Chapter 6

 

     Danny gave in and opened his eyes, though he didn’t really want to. He was finally asleep, comfortable, and whatever was droning on the television was keeping him calm and relaxed. When he did finally accept he was awake and opened his eyes, he found the other side of the bed empty. He groaned when he looked at the clock. It was four in the morning, at least in Italy. He wasn’t sure what the hell time it was according to his body. All he knew was that it wasn’t a good time to get up.

     “Steve?” he called out. There was no reply.

     Puzzled, he got up and wandered to the balcony doors. They were closed, but Steve was sitting out there, kind of hunched over in one of the chairs. For a moment he thought maybe the TV bothered him so much that he was sleeping in a chair on the balcony. He was wearing just his t-shirt and shorts, which seemed like it would be chilly, even if it was a mild night. Danny put on his own light jacket and picked up the one Steve had left lying on top of his travel bag and took it with him. He walked out on the balcony but didn’t speak when he saw Steve was very much awake, and sniffled, wiping at his eyes, straightening his posture, looking startled when Danny joined him.

     “I brought this...thought you might be cold out here,” he said, handing Steve the jacket.

     “A little,” he admitted, his voice still rough. His eyes were bloodshot and moist, not that Danny had long to look into them. He averted his gaze almost immediately as he put on the jacket.

     “I’m sorry if the TV kept you awake. I could have lived without it.” He sat in the other chair, then looked out at their amazing view. “When I was here with Rachel, we stayed in a five-star hotel, over that way,” he said, gesturing in the general direction of that hotel. “The view wasn’t as good as this,” he added.

     “Sorry I woke you up,” Steve said, leaning back in the chair now with the jacket on.

     “You okay?” Danny asked. There was no point in pretending he didn’t know Steve had been crying. He wasn’t blind, and Steve knew it.

     “Just a rough night.” He was quiet a moment. “Sometimes...I have nightmares.”

     “You had one tonight? Maybe it was the TV on that bothered you.”

     “No, it wasn’t that.” Steve sighed and looked at the Pantheon. “I was thinking how weird it is. I failed Freddie, left him there to die alone, and Stefano had to live with the fact he couldn’t save Daniel, that he wasn’t there when it mattered...” Steve snorted, but it wasn’t a happy or humorous sound. “Like our lineage is doomed to fail the one time it matters most.”

     “You didn’t fail Freddie, Steve. Unless there’s something else about the story you didn’t tell me.”

     “No, that was pretty much it. I drove off while he died alone and left him there with the enemy.”

     “So it would have been better if you’d died, too?”

     “Stefano threw himself on his sword for failing Daniel.”

     “He didn’t fail anybody, either.” Danny was quiet a moment, wondering if what he was about to say was a good idea, but he had to do something to cheer Steve up. After all, he felt a bit responsible for the other’s dark mood, since he’d more or less admitted he missed Stefano, that it was Steve’s ancestor he wanted, not Steve himself.  “It was the horse’s fault.”

     “What?” Steve turned to look at him, scowling with confusion.

     “Stefano was doing everything he could to get to Daniel when he knew he was in danger. So if he didn’t make it in time, it was the horse’s fault for not running fast enough.”

     Steve stared at him for a long moment before the corner of his mouth twitched up in a slight smile. “Blame it on the horse, huh?”

     “Why not? Stefano would have done anything to save Daniel. What wouldn’t you have done, if there was even a remote chance of it actually working, to save Freddie?”

     “Nothing.”

     “Well, there you go. You both knew it was over, there was no hospital or medical help nearby, and he was mortally wounded. You had a chance to survive, and you took it. Freddie wanted you to do that, right?”

     “Yeah, I know,” he mumbled, looking down again. “I chose him for that mission.”

     “He agreed to it.”

     “You didn’t know him, Danny. There wouldn’t have been a question he’d go if I asked him, and I knew it. I would have done the same for him.”

     “And would you have blamed it on him if you got killed doing it?”

     “No.”

     “But you blame yourself because of what happened to him?”

     “If I’d never asked him to go, he’d be home with his girlfriend. She’s pregnant,” he added.

     “That sucks, but it’s still not your fault.”

     “I didn’t know that when I asked him. He probably wouldn’t have finished SEAL training if I hadn’t urged him.”

     “So that makes his death your fault, too? You killed him because you inspired him to complete his training?”

     “Feels like it. And my dad died because of what I was into. Victor Hesse killed him to get at me.”

     “Steve, for God’s sake, I thought I was into guilt trips until I met you. None of this shit is your fault. Anymore than it was Stefano’s fault that Daniel got killed. Awful shit happens, and unless you shot Freddie or your dad yourself, it’s not your fault. Let it go. Mourn or cry or scream or whatever, but then let it go. You didn’t do it.”

     “I want to believe that but sometimes...I just...” He started to gesture with his right hand and then let it fall back in his lap. “When I met you, I thought...I don’t know what I thought exactly, but turns out I’m just some sorry substitute for Stefano. When we get back to Hawaii, if you want to go back to HPD and working with Anemoa, I won’t get in your way. I should have never forced you into this partnership so I can ruin your life or get you killed, too.”

     “You want out of our partnership?”

     “No, but I don’t want to force you to stay in it. I shouldn’t have done that in the first place.”

     “Probably not, but you did it, and here we are. Just for the record, I know how bad-ass you think you are, but you really couldn’t have forced me into something I didn’t consent to do.” Danny sighed. “You’re not a sorry substitute for anything, Steven. I mean that. It’s taking me time to sort out how I feel about all of this. Part of me is still hung up on this guy who isn’t actually real, at least, not anymore. Then I look at you and it feels like you’re him, but you’re not...but that doesn’t mean you’re _less_ or that you’re not...that we couldn’t...you know, at some point...”

     “Then why do I feel for you what Stefano felt for Daniel? It’s still there, Danny. I don’t differentiate like that. It’s like he took off for...wherever the hell he went, and left me holding the bag.”

     “You love me like Stefano loved Daniel?”

     Steve looked away, fixing his gaze on the view in front of them.

     “Wow.” Danny was quiet a few second while that sank in. He knew how intense those feelings were, because he’d felt them, but they were in those dream moments when he was experiencing what Daniel felt for Stefano. What he seemed to feel for Stefano. Or was Stefano just the vehicle and Steve was what he was supposed to focus on?

     No one had ever loved him like that. He knew that much. He’d loved Rachel almost that intensely, but even her...he couldn’t picture his love and devotion to her spanning centuries and triumphing, somehow, over death.

     “We should stay here another day, before we go to Santo Stefano. Do some sight-seeing, eat some good food, drink some amazing wine.”

     “You want to do that? I thought you’d want to get this over with and get back home.”

     “I kind of expected us to be booked in some tacky hostel somewhere.”

     “I do know how to pick a hotel, Danny,” Steve said, smiling faintly.

     “You’re not loose with your money.”

     “Some things are worth doing right. Other stuff...you just do it cheap because it doesn’t matter. We can’t really go anywhere fancy. You’ve probably got good clothes in your suitcase, but I just brought casual stuff.”

     “Yeah, because you could never find some nice men’s clothes in Italy,” Danny joked, and Steve actually laughed at that.

     “I guess that’s true.”

     “We can pop over to Milan if you want, drop a few grand on a suit.”

     “I think a store here in Rome will suffice. Or...”

     “Or what?”

     “We could do that sight-seeing, and then have room service bring us a really nice dinner and eat it out here, overlooking the great view,” he suggested, sounding almost a little shy and hesitant about it. The idea sounded lovely...and more than a little romantic. Danny found he didn’t mind that idea so much.

     “Sounds really nice,” he agreed. “You want to catch a nap before breakfast?”

     “I’m kind of tired,” Steve admitted.

     “Come on, let’s relax for a while and then get something to eat. The trail mix is wearing off.”

     Steve smiled at that and followed Danny into the room. They got back in bed and Danny turned off the TV.

     “You won’t be able to sleep, will you?”

     “I’m pretty sleepy,” he said.

     He’d purposely managed to land a bit closer to the middle of the bed, a bit closer to Steve, than he had been before. Steve seemed to have done the same, so they were settling comfortably to rest with their bodies not too far from touching. Danny was on his side, facing Steve, and Steve moved from his back to his side, as if he realized there was an opportunity he was missing. The move put them a little closer than they planned. Danny could see the love in Steve’s eyes that he’d seen in Stefano’s eyes, but that love was directed at Daniel. This was all his. Steve didn’t want Daniel. For some reason, he’d skipped over that and fallen in love with Danny. And Danny knew he kept on hurting him by carrying the torch for a dead guy who wasn’t around anymore. At least, not around Danny.

     Danny reached over and touched Steve’s cheek lightly. And then he moved forward until their lips met. He wasn’t Daniel kissing Stefano. He was Danny kissing Steve, and it felt good, and right, and for the first time in more years that he could remember, he felt loved.

     Steve didn't lose any time responding. He slid his arms around Danny, moving over him, kissing him more deeply, passionately, letting Danny feel his strength, but holding it in check with infinite gentleness. Steve wasn't Stefano, but he didn't have to be. Danny wanted him to be exactly who he was, and doing exactly what he was doing.

     Steve's hand moved down his back until it rested in the curve between his back and his ass, lingering there while they kissed, but not moving farther down just yet. Never one to keep his own hands still for long, Danny ran one hand over the contours of Steve's biceps, the other sliding into his silky dark hair. It wasn't as long as Stefano's, but it was soft and it curled around his fingers.

     Soft lips were moving down his chin now, traveling to his neck, a devilish tongue joining them, licking and sucking at the tender skin of Danny's neck. Danny thrust up a bit, bringing their growing erections into contact with each other through the thin fabric of their shorts. He pulled on Steve's t-shirt until he cooperated with it being removed and tossed aside. Not to be outdone, Steve pulled Danny's undershirt over his head and threw it on top of his own, on the floor somewhere near the bed. They caught each other's gaze and chuckled then at their awkwardness trying to wriggle out of their shorts without stopping what they were doing.

     Danny hooked his leg around Steve's and for a few seconds they worked themselves up with a little intense humping until Steve let out a gasp of Danny's name, coming, just before Danny felt his own climax sweeping over him, their come mingling and making their friction even better with the slickness of it.

     They lay there in each other's arms, panting, cooling down.

     "I wanted that to last longer," Steve admitted, and that made Danny laugh.

     "Yeah, me, too, but I'm not complaining," he replied, kissing Steve again. "Now I really wanna sleep."

     "Me, too," Steve admitted, yawning. "You mean we don't have to stay awake and talk this to death?"

     "Do we need to?"

     "No..." Steve was quiet a second. "I love you, Danny."

     "I love you, too."

     "You don't have to say it if you're still...confused about things."

     "I'm not confused about this. I wanted to be with you. Not a ghost."

     Steve smiled at that, and Danny wondered if his face was going to split in half, he looked so happy. They cuddled up together, pulling the sheet up over their cooling bodies, and relaxed. Before long, they drifted off to sleep and wouldn't come to again until lunchtime.

       
********  


     The next time Steve opened his eyes, the sun was streaming in the balcony doors, a ray of it highlighting Danny's blond hair. Danny showed no signs of insomnia now; he was still sleeping soundly, his arm around Steve, head on his shoulder. Steve knew he should be considerate and not wake him, but he had to let his fingers stray into the soft blond strands and nuzzle it with his nose.

     "Hey, take it easy on the hair," a groggy voice said as Danny stirred a bit and ran his hand back and forth over Steve's chest, letting his thumb brush over Steve's nipples, eliciting a little gasp. "There's information for me to file away for later. Nice and sensitive there, are we?"

     "A little," Steve admitted, grinning. He shifted onto his side, holding Danny closer so their bodies were pressed against each other. "I suppose we should get out of bed and sight see or something," he said, kissing Danny's neck, his hands caressing Danny's back, one of them sliding down to his ass and resting there.

     "Find something you like?" Danny asked, kissing Steve's chest, moving his lips and tongue toward one of those tasty little nipples.

     "Yeah, when I ran into you," Steve replied, covering Danny's mouth with his, kissing him intensely, their tongues sliding against each other. Steve laid his hand on Danny's chest, feeling the soft hair under his fingers.

                                               

"You like that?" Danny asked as Steve caressed his chest lightly.

     "I've wanted to touch it for a while now, see what it felt like," he admitted, though he hadn't planned to say that out loud.

     "Rachel thought it was too much. She kept urging me to get it waxed."

     "Waxed? If you were gonna get this waxed, they'd have to knock you out with a general anesthetic first," Steve joked, and Danny laughed. Still, the thought of him changing his body, how he looked...it didn't set well with Steve. "You don't have to change anything on my account," he said softly, kissing Danny's chest, then moving toward his nipple and licking it before sucking on it, making Danny gasp. "Guess I'm not the only one who's sensitive there," he said, kissing the little nub. Then Steve's stomach growled.

     "We're in Rome, famous in part for its amazing food, and we're lying here starving to death," Danny observed.

     "Stupid, isn't it?"

     "Kind of. Let's go eat, walk around a little, and then come back here for that dinner on the balcony you were talking about."

     "Yeah, that sounds nice," Steve agreed, grinning, sitting up as Danny did the same.

     "I just want you to know...you're not a substitute for anybody, Steven. Not even Stefano. I know who I'm with, and it's where I want to be."

     "Me, too," Steve said, catching Danny's hand in his and kissing it. "Let's go eat."

       
********  


     After changing into jeans, shirts, and comfortable walking shoes, they started out strolling around the Pantheon and looking for a perfect spot for lunch. They found one in a quaint little restaurant that offered an upstairs, outdoor terrace. They were early for the lunch crowd, so with a little persuasion and some extra money, the manager figured a way to fit them in to what was allegedly a fully booked lunch hour.

     Danny perused the wine list, Steve seeming more than happy to relinquish that duty to him.

     "Pick a good one," Steve said, looking at the food items on the menu while Danny checked the wine list.

     "Really? I thought I'd pick one that was cheap and unpleasant, just for kicks," Danny retorted, though he was only kidding and Steve laughed, obviously having picked up on the friendly tone.

     "I meant, don't worry about the price. Special occasion," Steve muttered a little shyly. Danny smiled at that.

     "I found a nice one that shouldn't use up our whole vacation budget." Danny paused, laying the wine list aside. "Why did you think I'd know wine?"

     "You're part Italian."

     "So are you, obviously, based on Stefano."

     "Yeah, back in there somewhere, but it's not predominant."

     "So that's hereditary for Italians?"

     "I don't know anything about it, other than you usually pair a lighter wine with seafood or chicken and the darker ones with beef and certain other dishes."

     "You know almost as much as I do, then. I did learn something about them from my grandmother. She knew just about all there was to know about food, and how to put on a good dinner."

     Their server was a middle aged woman who spoke heavily accented English. When Danny ordered the wine, she asked if they were celebrating a special occasion. Steve raised his eyebrows at Danny, as if to ask if the wine was really that good. Danny smiled.

     "First date," he said, reaching over and taking Steve's hand. The waitress smiled, but looked confused. "He brought me to Rome for our first date," Danny replied. "When he does something, he really does it."

     "Go big or go home, that's my motto," Steve said, winking at Danny.

     “I’ll be right back with your wine, gentlemen,” she replied, laughing, heading back to place their orders.

     “So what did you do with Rachel and Grace while you were here?” Steve asked, sitting back in his chair, looking more relaxed than he usually seemed. Danny could feel a little of the tension easing himself.

     “Rachel had an itinerary of historically significant sites for us to visit, so we did that. Then she and Grace took their three-day side trip to Milan to spend an obscene amount of money on clothes.”

     “Ah,” Steve said, nodding. “And that’s when you went on your little adventure.”

     “Yeah, I was bored, and looking back, it seems like an awful lot of things happened to urge me to go there.” Danny was quiet a moment. “I always wanted to take Rachel somewhere amazing on a romantic trip, but I couldn’t really afford it. Kind of ironic she decided she wanted a divorce right before we finally took a trip like that. I guess Grace had some fun, although she seemed bored until they went to Milan. I’d like to take Grace on a big trip someday, someplace she really wants to go.”

     “We should do that, once she gets used to me,” Steve said as the wine was served. When the waitress left again, Danny stared at him, surprised.

     “You’d want to do that?”

     “Yeah...why wouldn’t I?” Steve asked, looking confused.

     “I don’t know. I guess I...I’m not sure why I thought you wouldn’t.” _Maybe because it’s been such a long time since someone really wanted me...and you want to be in my daughter’s life, too...glad I finally got my head out of my ass and saw you instead of a ghost who looks like you._

“We should drink to something,” Steve said, pouring the wine.

     “Well, I guess we can drink to Stefano and Daniel. They started this.”

     “I’ll drink to that,” Steve agreed, tapping his glass against Danny’s. “That’s good stuff,” Steve said after they’d had their first sip. “So how did you first hurt your knee?”

     “What?”

     “I noticed you favor it sometimes,” Steve said.

     “Genuflecting to Rachel. A repetitive motion injury.” Danny was grinning, but Steve laughed as he was drinking his wine, causing him the painful and inelegant moment of some of it coming out through his nose. “That couldn’t have felt good,” Danny said, chuckling.

     “Interesting form of torture to add to Guantanamo’s roster,” Steve said, blinking, not seeming thrilled to be the subject of some amused observation by guests at a couple nearby tables as he cleaned up the minor disaster with his napkin.

     “I hurt it playing baseball in high school. I was pretty good, too, until I tore my ACL.”

     “Ouch.”

     “Yeah, it still acts up sometimes. How about you? You’ve gotta have a list of injuries you’ve overcome since you operate like you have a death wish most of the time.”

     “I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve got some scars here and there, but nothing major.”

     “No wonder you think you’re indestructible, then.”

     “I’m sure I’m not, but you do what you’ve gotta do to accomplish the mission, you know?”

     Danny was about to give that a sarcastic comeback, but he thought of Freddie Hart and how much that seemed to have wounded Steve’s soul, and he refrained.

     “Yeah, I know that’s a thing with you SEAL guys.”

     “Yeah, it’s a thing,” Steve repeated, actually smiling a little at the oversimplification. “You’ve been in the Pantheon, I suppose?”

     “Rachel and I took Grace there,” Danny replied. “I’d still like to go see it with you,” he said. “You know, walk the same ground Stefano and Daniel probably walked at some point.”

     “I was thinking that, too,” Steve said, sipping his wine now that the conversation had become more serious.

     Before long, their table was laden with delicious food, and they thoroughly enjoyed their first large meal since arriving in Rome. After lunch, they toured the Pantheon, and Danny found he was enjoying it much more this time around. Grace had seemed bored with it, and while Rachel enjoyed it, the tension between them was almost stifling and he was still coping with the impending divorce. Now, he was with someone he loved, who loved him, and they were sharing the experience, pondering how many of the works of art or historic relics Stefano and Daniel had seen there back in their heyday.

     It was late in the afternoon when they finished their tour, and Danny watched one of the horse-drawn carriages leaving the Piazza with a young couple seated in it, cuddled together and pointing out the sights to each other.

     “You wanna do that?” Steve asked, although he was already in motion flagging down the last available carriage.

     “Looks like fun,” Danny agreed, again forgoing the remark that teetered on the tip of his tongue teasing Steve for acting before he could answer. He did want to ride in one, and his knee was getting kind of tired.

     Once they got in the open air carriage, Steve ran his arm along the back of the seat behind Danny, and Danny made himself comfortable nice and close to Steve’s side. The breeze was messing up his hair, but Steve seemed to like that. Once in a while, he’d reach over and brush a few strands out of Danny’s eyes. When he did that, it carried Danny back to those early dreams of Stefano by the pond under the trees, when he’d done the same thing with Daniel’s hair, right before they made love out there by the water.

     This wasn’t Stefano, though. It was Steve. Danny smiled, leaned over, and kissed him. It was Steve, and that was just the man Danny wanted to kiss.

       
********  


     It was a long and amazing day seeing the sights of Rome with Danny, and Steve couldn’t have been happier to know he finally had managed to get the edge on Stefano for Danny’s affections. It was weird competing with a 2000-year-old ancestor, but that’s the position he’d found himself in. Now, Danny seemed to have fallen for the current version, and Steve was grateful for whatever role Stefano played in making that happen.

     As they were strolling back to their hotel, he reached over and took Danny’s hand. He smiled when Danny’s fingers curled around his and gave a little squeeze. Then a thought occurred to him.

     “You suppose there’s a drugstore around here anywhere?”

     “A drugstore?”

     “Uh, yeah. I forgot a couple things.”

     “The hotel usually has some stuff. You can borrow anything you need from me. We’ve already established I pack more than you do.”

     “I don’t think you have what I need. Well, you do, but not what I need from a drugstore,” Steve corrected, grinning, stealing a kiss.

     “Just a shot in the dark here,” Danny began, and Steve braced himself, figuring he was in for a lifetime of teasing. “Regular or ribbed?”

     “Oh, fuck,” Steve groaned, rolling his eyes. “Not too subtle, huh?”

     “Please tell me you’re smoother undercover.”

     “Usually, yeah. Better prepared, too.”

     “There’s a _farmacia_ a few blocks from here. Come on, let’s go get stocked up. Just don’t try buying one of those weird lubes that gets warm or makes you see rockets launching or something, because I’m not going for it.”

     “It’s a deal,” Steve replied, laughing.

     Their trip to the drugstore was oddly romantic and more than a little sexy, though they spent part of it giggling like a couple teenagers as they perused the array of condoms and interpreted what the Italian names and features might actually mean in English. Danny volunteered to pay for the supplies, since Steve was paying for the trip.

     “You do realize that paying for the stuff isn’t going to be the deciding factor in who’s on top first, right?” Steve teased. Danny smiled calmly, smugly.

     “Oh, I think that’s already been decided,” he quipped, and since they were up to the cashier, Steve had to save his response to that until later.

           

  
********  


     Once they were back at the hotel, they stretched out on the bed and looked over the room service menu together. They chose a tasty lineup of foods and when Danny called in the order, he told them it was a special occasion and asked if they could provide candles and a cloth for the table on the balcony. Steve found a radio station that was playing mostly easy listening music, and while it wasn’t either of their first choices for music genre, it did set a nice, romantic atmosphere.                                                                                     

Room service soon arrived with a cart carrying their order. The young man who brought it wheeled it out to the balcony and put a white linen cloth on the table, set two candles in holders in the center and lit them, and then arranged the food on the table. After he left, they sat at the table and began exploring the food, from the antipasto to the zabaglione with strawberries for dessert. The main course was veal parmigiana with spaghetti and garlic bread.

     “Everything looks great,” Steve commented as they began eating.

     “Too bad I walked out on Father Ignacio. His housekeeper can cook this well,” Danny replied, chuckling.

     “Maybe I can get us back on his good side. Sounds like the rectory would be better accommodations than the inn.”

     “Hell, when people around there see you, they’ll probably worship you.”

     “The resemblance is that strong, huh? Even to the dead body?”

     “Yeah, you have the same face. I mean, _exactly_ the same face. Everything else looks pretty similar, too, except he didn’t have tattoos.”

     “Everything?”

     “I didn’t peek under his toga, if that’s what you mean, but everything I could see,” Danny said, grinning, then, feeling himself blush a little, he added, “Everything I remember from the dreams, there aren’t many differences.”

     “Being with you...it was like what I remember from the dreams, too,” Steve admitted.

     “I guess we’re good then. I mean, Daniel and Stefano have been in love for 2,000 years.”

     “And it was strong enough to tamper with the forces of life and death, and nature.”

     “I’m serious, though, you better wear a cap and shades when we walk around there, because you’re going to freak people out. Probably give Father Ignacio a stroke.”

     “Now I’m really anxious to get there and see him. Stefano, I mean, not Ignacio. Although a priest who carries a gun and doubles as security chief for a 2,000-year-old Roman soldier has to be a pretty interesting guy, too.” Steve was digging into the food with his usual gusto. He looked up and noticed Danny watching him. “What?” he asked through a mouth so full that he should not have been able to speak.

     Danny looked at him for a moment, a myriad of sarcastic replies dancing through his mind. Then he really looked at Steve, how happy and relaxed he was, and how much love was in his eyes, directed right at Danny. So instead, he smiled, and reached over and took Steve’s hand.

     “I love you, that’s all,” he replied, smiling. Steve actually paused in the motion of chewing, and did his best to smile around his mouthful.

     “That’s everything, Danno,” he said, then swallowed. He took a drink of wine. “Sorry, you caught me with my mouth full.” He laced his fingers with Danny’s.

     “If that’s a problem, I couldn’t speak to you after the food’s served,” he quipped, unable to resist such an obvious opening. Steve shot him a look, but smiled at him afterwards. “It’s good to know that you have room in there for large things,” he added, taking another bite of his veal. Steve stared at him a moment and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

     “You’d be surprised what else I can do with my mouth,” Steve replied, giving Danny a bit of his own medicine in the innuendo department.

     Danny scooted his chair so it was next to Steve’s and brought his dessert with him. Steve eyed him a little curiously, though he was smiling and leaned over to run his arm along the back of Danny’s chair. Danny took a spoonful of the dessert and held it toward Steve, who ate it, keeping his eyes more on Danny than the food. That made Danny smile, wondering if he should share the thought.

     “What?” Steve noticed him smiling. “Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?” he asked, looking concerned, as if he’d blown some romantic moment.

     “Yes, you did fine, Steven,” Danny said, chuckling, leaning over to kiss him.

     “Then what?” Steve still looked troubled.

     “I was just thinking that you’re finally looking at me more than the food.”

     Steve stared at him a moment, seeming at a loss for a reply to that. “It’s hard to eat without looking at your food, Danny.”

     “Shut up and eat your dessert,” Danny replied, laughing, offering him another bite.

     “Shouldn’t we take turns or something?” Steve said, dipping his spoon into his own dessert. There was something so cute, and so honest, in his clumsiness with romance that Danny didn’t have the heart to keep teasing him.

     “Yeah, that’d be nice,” he agreed, accepting the bite Steve held up for him. They went back and forth that way for a few bites until Steve frowned.

     “Hold on, you’ve got something...”

     “What?”

     Steve leaned over and licked a drop of cream off Danny’s lower lip, and then pounced on him, kissing him passionately, his tongue sliding between Danny’s lips as he pulled Danny toward him. Danny straddled Steve’s lap, glad to be as close to him as he could get, returning the kiss with eagerness, his hand going into Steve’s hair, his arm around Steve’s shoulders.

     Normally, he would have objected vocally to Steve standing, grabbing his ass, and moving them quickly inside to the bed, but instead he wrapped his legs around Steve’s hips and kept on devouring his mouth. He didn’t much care how they got to the bed, as long as it was fast. He knew someday he’d look back on this moment and remember the soft breeze coming in from the balcony or the candlelight or the music in the background. It was amazing and romantic, but at the moment it was hot and urgent and passionate and fun and clothes were flying in all directions and then Steve was kissing his way down Danny’s chest to his stomach until he wrapped his hand around the base of Danny’s erection and took it in his mouth, making Danny gasp in pleasure and grab the sheets in handfuls.

     He didn’t know what to focus on first: Steve’s hot mouth on his cock or his hand, slipping underneath to squeeze his ass and tease his hole. That devilish mouth left his cock and moved down to his balls, licking and sucking on them, his fingertip getting more aggressive as it rubbed over his pucker. Then Steve’s mouth left him and he looked up at Danny. There was a definite question in his eyes.

     “Go ahead, babe, you’re on a roll,” Danny said, grinning at him. Steve smiled back then, reaching for the lube. Danny willed himself to relax. He’d never been on the receiving end of this, and Steve was nicely endowed, but he was anxious to make love with Steve and he trusted him to take his time.

     The slippery finger easing inside him actually felt pretty good. With his feet flat on the bed and his knees bent, he seemed to be giving Steve easy enough access, and he was fairly comfortable. The deeper Steve went, it was a bit of an odd sensation, but before long he was enjoying himself again.

     “I’m gonna try two fingers,” Steve said, easing out, adding more lube.

     “So far so good,” Danny said.

     “Have you ever done this before?”

     “Nope. Got one blow job once, but that was all.”

     “Are you sure...?”

     “Yeah, I’m sure.”

     “I’ll be careful,” Steve replied, easing the two fingers inside him. Danny let out a breath, trying to relax, telling himself that muscles stretched, and two gentle fingers wouldn’t rip him in half. “Are you okay, Danno?” Steve asked, looking nervous now.

     “I will be,” he said, exhaling again, slowly. “Just need to get used to it.”

     Steve kept up a gentle motion with the fingers, until he curved them just the right way to rub over Danny’s prostate. Danny shouted in surprise and pleasure, throwing his head back, bearing down on Steve’s fingers.

     “Do that again,” he gasped. “Just keep doing it until I come or I die, whichever comes first.”

     “I’ll do it again,” Steve said, withdrawing the two fingers and lubing up three. “If you can take three fingers for me.”

     “Right now I’d take a fucking telephone pole as long as it did that.”

     “Thanks, buddy. I don’t think I’m that big, but you know, close,” Steve said.

     “Oh, God, the only thing bigger than your dick is gonna be your ego now,” Danny lamented, sighing.

     Steve eased three fingers inside him, and for a moment, he didn’t move much. Danny was glad for that because he felt like someone just stuck a watermelon up his ass.

     “Relax and breathe, sweetheart,” Steve said gently, rubbing his stomach and then stroking his softening erection. “I’m gonna work my way up to your sweet spot, nice and easy,” he said, and Danny focused on his voice, relaxing his body as much as he could. Then Steve found that magic spot again, and this time he worked it until Danny was gasping, shouting, arching his body up and then bearing back down, wanting more.

     “You better do it or I’m gonna finish this without you,” Danny said, breathless. Steve was already preparing himself. Danny was eyeing the large cock more with anticipation than fear now, sufficiently worked up and excited that he just wanted more of what Steve had been doing with his fingers.

     “I’m on my way,” Steve replied, grinning, lining himself up with Danny’s center and pushing in gently. Danny felt his eyes bug a bit at the penetration; it did hurt at first, but he was new to this, and there wasn’t much getting around that. Steve looked intensely focused and managed to not thrust or push in fast. Danny wondered if he’d have that much self control when it was his turn. If it meant not hurting Steve, he figured he would.

     “Try a little more,” he said, his voice strained. Steve did, and it actually felt kind of good. Full, stretching, sort of painful yet, but good at the same time. He wasn’t sure if it was intentional or just natural, but Steve’s cock was sliding over his prostate the deeper he went, and Danny found himself gripping Steve’s hips with his thighs, grabbing his biceps, pulling him forward. Not a man to need much urging to action, Steve pushed in the rest of the way, dragging a cry of pleasure out of Danny.

     Just when he thought the sensations were too much, Steve started a slow, shallow thrusting motion, and the shockwaves of pleasure outweighed the discomfort. Danny had a feeling he was going to be sore in the morning, but for now, it felt amazing. Intense, bordering on pain, but pleasure so... _sharp_ that he couldn’t stay quiet. He was moaning and cursing and making noises as Steve moved in and out of him, his pace picking up as if he could read Danny’s mind. Maybe he was just that focused on reading Danny’s body and its needs.

     Even at its most spirited, Danny knew Steve wasn’t really giving it to him full force. He was a virgin to this, and Steve might be excited and enjoying himself, and wanting to satisfy Danny, but he wasn’t about to hurt him, either.

     Steve started stroking Danny’s cock in time with their thrusts, kissing and licking Danny’s chest. Then he leaned forward enough to claim Danny’s mouth, sticking his tongue inside and stealing what little breath Danny had left, wrapping his arms around Danny’s body, kissing him and fucking him almost in perfect rhythm. On a particularly deep thrust, Danny let out a throaty shout, and he was coming, feeling like Steve’s cock was forcing every last drop out of him, working his prostate and his ass until he was spent and exhausted, until he felt Steve’s movements getting more uneven, his shouts of pleasure muffled against Danny’s neck as he came.

     They just lay there a moment, panting, recovering.

     “This is probably gonna hurt coming out,” Steve said, sounding regretful.

     “I’m okay, babe. Just take it slow.” It did hurt a bit as Steve eased out of him, and his passage felt raw, stretched, and empty. And good. Oddly good. Good enough he would have been aroused by it if he had anything left to give.

     “Are you okay?” Steve whispered in his ear, kissing it, taking Danny in his arms. His hand went down to Danny’s ass, caressing it.

     “Oh, yeah,” Danny said, and for some reason he couldn’t explain, a little laugh escaped him.

     “That good, huh?”

     “Pretty damn good,” Danny agreed, kissing Steve. “I may not walk straight tomorrow, but yeah, real good.”

     “Not that it’s a big surprise, but you’ve got the best ass in the world.”

     “So you’ve been doing global research on this?”

     “Don’t have to. Know the best when I have it. Not sure how anything could be better than that.”

     “Doggystyle,” Danny whispered in Steve’s ear, and chuckled when he felt him shudder at that. “You’re not getting excited already, are you?”

     “Yeah, but my dick is passed out sleeping it off. Just...the thought of you on all fours...” Steve’s hand squeezed Danny’s butt cheek. “God that’s a hot idea.”

     “How do you know I wasn’t planning on you being on all fours?”

     “That’s not a bad idea, either,” Steve replied, kissing him.

     “Let’s take a nap and then see what comes up.”

     “I think I can predict that.”

     “Pun intended,” Danny quipped, nipping at Steve’s chin before settling against him to rest.

       
********  



	7. Chapter 7

 

     Steve woke up in the wee hours of the morning, Danny wrapped around him, sleeping soundly. He smiled, watching Danny sleep there in the shadows of the room. A little moonlight and light from the street filtered in through curtains that stirred slowly in the mild breeze. The candles had burned out but the music was still playing softly in the background.

     "I can hear you thinking, Steven," Danny mumbled, not opening his eyes. Steve laughed softly at that.

     "You reading my mind now?" he asked, sliding his fingers into Danny's hair.

     "Maybe it's like the Vulcan mind meld thing," Danny replied, sounding sleepy. "So what's got you awake after such great, mind-blowing sex?" he teased, kissing Steve's chest.

     "I guess I missed you," he said, holding Danny a little tighter, kissing him.

     "Yeah?" Danny asked, smiling, opening his eyes now. "That's nice."

     Steve pressed his palm against Danny's and laced their fingers. "I love you, Danny."

     "I love you, too, babe."

     "I've been thinking."

     "Don't hurt yourself."

     "Cute," Steve replied, kissing his way down Danny's cheek to his neck.

     "What did you come up with at..." Danny raised up a bit to see the digital clock on the night stand. "Ah, shit, three in the morning?"

     "Maybe we've been looking at this Stefano thing all wrong."

     "How do you mean?" Danny asked, frowning.

     "All this time we thought he somehow couldn't be with Daniel."

     "Yeah, so?"

     "That doesn't make sense. If Stefano was really a good man who saved the lives of others, and Daniel was a good man who protected and saved children, even if we buy into everything that's happened, every supernatural part of it, why would God punish them by keeping them apart?"

     "I don't know. Suicide is supposed to be a mortal sin."

     "I'd like to think God is a little more evolved than religion."

     "So then why would he stick around? He clearly wanted to be with Daniel, enough so to throw himself on his sword when he lost him."

     "Well, when we get to Santo Stefano, I guess you can ask him yourself."

     "Very funny. I'm serious."

     "You obviously have a theory," Danny said, yawning, rubbing his eyes.

     "What if none of it was ever about Stefano and Daniel?" Steve paused. "What if it was about you and me?"

     "Us? So Stefano stuck around for 2,000 years to get us together?"

     "You don't think it would be worth it?" Steve asked, feeling a little hurt that Danny didn't see what was going on between them as being worth whatever it took to get there.

     "It was kind of Stefano's idea for me to move to Hawaii." Danny was quiet a moment. "When Rachel decided to move and I knew she was leaving, it was like my guts were torn out. And then it's like Stefano just gave me that nudge to follow her."

     "And if you'd never come to Hawaii..."

     "I'd have never met you. Even if I visited Gracie out there, I wouldn't have been with HPD."

     "If Stefano hadn't let me feel what he felt for Daniel... Danny, I'm not really proud of it, but I probably wouldn't have made a move on you, even if I wanted to."

     “Not like I grew up in a real broad-minded setting when it came to gay relationships, either.” Danny sighed. "Kind of makes sense...as much as any of this does."

     “We should get breakfast and get started if we’re gonna make the trip today.”

     “Yeah, and we need time to take a shower,” Danny said.

     “That takes about two minutes, Danny.”

     “Two minutes? Seriously?”

     “Yeah, you’ve never heard of a Navy shower?”

     “Why would I have heard of that?”

     “It’s about efficiency, not luxury.”

     “Two minutes, huh? You, me, naked, wet, slippery...you think two minutes is gonna do it?”

     “Keep talking like that and another thirty seconds or so is gonna do it for me.”

     “We better get a move on then,” Danny replied, getting up and pulling Steve along with him to the bathroom. 

       
********  


     Danny was finally getting his chance to have his fill of exploring Steve’s body, tracing its perfect contours. He couldn’t have asked for a better first time the night before, but he didn’t get nearly as much time as he wanted to get his hands on every part of Steve, to get to know him as a physical reality. He wanted to replace all the muddled fantasy images of Stefano with Steve, so that when he thought of his lover, he was thinking of only the flesh and blood man himself, and not some shadow of the past.

     He had Steve pinned to the tiles of the shower, kissing his neck and his chest, caressing his sides down to his hips, letting his hands slide over the wet, slick skin of that taught, perfect ass, rubbing against him, wanting to go down on him but not wanting to give up their closeness and all the other places he was putting his mouth. Steve had one hand in Danny’s hair and one on his back, tracing the curve down to his ass.

     While they were thrusting against each other, their friction aided by the slickness of water and shower gel, Danny claimed Steve’s mouth in a long, hungry, almost desperate kiss. It was not unlike the first one they’d shared when Daniel and Stefano pushed them together and used them to experience their reunion. This was better, though, at least for Danny. He wasn’t being compelled by an unseen force or confused what feelings were his own and what were Daniel’s. Steve was responding to him, and he heard a little choked cry in the back of Steve’s throat as their kiss lingered on and he was coming, which encouraged Danny to reach his own climax before they slumped there in each other’s arms, sharing little kisses, holding each other, finally making sure to wash the traces of their lovemaking off with the warm water, shower gel, and their hands.

     Dressed in robes, they ordered a hearty breakfast from room service and set the table next to the bed. Cuddling up on the bed, they fed each other, took frequent breaks to kiss or make out a little, and finally made it through breakfast by late morning.

     Danny enjoyed this train ride into the rural territory near Santo Stefano much more, with Steve by his side, holding hands and pointing out the scenery to each other. It still felt odd, as if they were going home instead of visiting a tourist site. After they had been riding in silence a while, Steve looked at him with a little smile.

     “I don’t think you’ve been quiet this long the entire time I’ve known you.”

     “Choose your next words carefully, Steven,” Danny replied, chuckling. “It just feels weird. Going back to Santo Stefano.”

     “Good weird or bad weird?”

     “Just...weird. When I got to this point in the trip last time, I was dreaming about Grace, dressed like she would have been at that time...I guess, because she wasn’t dressed in anything modern. It feels like coming home instead of going on a trip.”

     “Yeah, for me, too.”

     “Really?”

     “Yeah, really. It all looks familiar but I don’t know why. Well, I do, but I mean not from conscious memories.”

     “Exactly. Sometimes I wonder. It’s like all the lines are blurred. I want to say Daniel’s gone, but sometimes it feels like he isn’t.”

     “I don’t have dreams about Stefano anymore, or Daniel, but it’s like he’s still kind of...there, in my head.”

     “Yeah, same here.” Danny was quiet a minute, and then he thought he should make an important distinction. “I’m not in love with Stefano anymore, just for the record, babe.”

     Steve smiled brightly at that and leaned over, stealing a kiss.

     “Good, because Daniel seemed like a great guy, but he’s not you.”

     They arrived at the bed and breakfast where Danny had stayed on his trip. When they walked in, the grumpy elderly woman who’d checked Danny in the first time was still sitting at the little table in the main room of the house when they entered, but her eyes bugged and she stared at them, muttering something in Italian, crossing herself, and fleeing to the back of the house.

     “Not much of a customer service person, is she?” Steve commented, smiling.

     “Get used to it. We haven’t even gotten to Santo Stefano yet.”

     “I’m sure it’s not because of that,” Steve said, dismissive, chuckling. Danny raised an eyebrow. A few moments later, a middle aged man with dark hair and a mustache came out, the old lady hovering behind him, as if for protection. His eyes widened momentarily, but he recovered better than she did.

     “Forgive my mother’s reaction, but...have you been to Santo Stefano?” he asked.

     “That’s where we’re going,” Danny replied. “I stayed here before, last year, when I came by myself. Steve is a descendant of Stefano’s,” he added.

     The elderly woman asked her son something in Italian, gesturing at her own head.

     “She wants to know if you’re a descendant of Daniel. She said the man Stefano loved had blond hair like yours, according to the stories.”

     “I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised.” They waited while the man translated that for his mother.

     The old lady moved past her son and took Danny’s hand, then took Steve’s hand and placed it over Danny’s, smiling and saying something else in Italian.

     “She said your love has survived 2,000 years and is blessed by God.”

     Danny couldn’t help but feel that the innkeepers were preparing a celebratory feast for Stefano and Daniel as the four of them sat around the dinner table, eating an abundant array of home cooked food and drinking wine that was probably better tasting and more authentic than what they’d have paid a big price for in a restaurant in the city.

     The elderly woman, whose name was Luciana, shared what she’d heard of Stefano’s and Daniel’s story while her son, Roberto, translated for her. They didn’t learn much more than they already knew from Father Ignacio and a few other sources, but one additional fact did surface: no one seemed to know where Daniel’s grave was.

     “That’s insane when you think about it,” Danny said. “Daniel martyred himself to protect the children, and he’s just...what? Stuck in a hole someplace? But Stefano is in a shrine? How does that happen?”

     “You must understand,” Roberto began, “that Daniel would have been viewed as a criminal by the Roman authorities, and most likely put to death in a very unpleasant way if he hadn’t been killed on the spot the way he was. There is a distinct danger that his remains would have been left to rot in some public area or otherwise desecrated. It’s likely Stefano took the body with them when he left with the children, and his burial place is a well-kept secret.”

     “It should be obvious,” Steve said. “I took Daniel to the cave and buried him there, and then brought about my own death on his resting place, let my blood run into the soil and mix with his, so we’d always be together,” Steve concluded. He was so calm and matter of fact in the explanation that Danny shivered, as if the words weren’t enough. “And then they took me away from Daniel and locked me in a box and I couldn’t protect him, couldn’t rest with him.”      

     Luciana was furiously crossing herself and praying, and Danny didn’t know if he should touch Steve, disturb him in any way, or try to help him. Roberto just stared, shocked. Then Steve’s body jerked, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped forward in the chair.

     “Steve!” Danny touched his shoulder, shook it, touched his face and checked his pulse. Thankfully it was still strong, though a bit rapid.

     Steve shook his head and opened his eyes, as if he’d just nodded off at the table. Danny watched Steve a moment, and it was eerily evident he wasn’t looking at Steve or hearing him. Stefano was having his say. For the first time in 2,000 years, Stefano was making his feelings known. When Steve first looked Danny in the eyes, he knew he wasn’t looking at Steve. And Steve wasn’t looking at him. Stefano was looking right at him; he’d know those eyes anywhere, even if they were almost the same odd color as Steve’s.

     “Sorry. I guess I was more tired than I thought,” he said, touching his forehead, squinting a little.

     “Do you have a headache?” Danny asked, concerned, and yet relieved when Steve looked at him again and he felt like it was really Steve this time.

     “Not exactly, my head just feels funny.” He looked around at the stunned faces of his table mates. “What? Did something happen?”

     “Stefano was here,” Danny said. “In you.”

     “What?”

     “Stefano just told us where Daniel was buried.”

     “I must’ve been dreaming, talked in my sleep.”

     “Steve, it wasn’t like that. It was like you just responded to what we were talking about, how Daniel didn’t have a known grave, and you were talking in the first person.”

     “I don’t remember any of that. At any rate, I doubt I was possessed.”

     “So out of everything that’s going on, you’re going to pick up on that as not being believable?” Danny asked, annoyed.

     “Why would Gratia separate them?” Steve asked. “That doesn’t make sense to me. If that’s what Stefano is agonizing over, what’s made him miserable for 2,000 years, she must have known how important it would be to him to be with Daniel.”

     “That would still not explain the incorrupt state of his body, which is a sign of divine intervention,” Roberto said. “If Gratia had a dream, or a vision, and then they unearthed his remains and found him so intact...they would consider it a sign from God that he was a saint, and he would be preserved and enshrined somehow. Assuming they believed that Daniel’s and Stefano’s souls were not tied to their bodies any longer, they wouldn’t feel they were doing anything wrong. There wouldn’t be a reason to disturb Daniel’s grave.”

     “So why was he preserved?” Steve asked, sighing.

     “He’s not the only incorrupt corpse, Steve. No matter how you explain it through forensics, if you accept the explanation of the Church when they verify one of these cases, it’s a miracle. Stefano didn’t directly die as a result of the things he did to save Christians from persecution, but he apparently saved quite a few people and was true to his faith despite orders from Rome he often ignored or circumvented.”

     “When a spirit remains bound to this plane, it is usually because of unfinished business,” Roberto said. “If we accept that Stefano’s preservation was due to his place of favor with God, then his continued misery and lingering here on Earth could easily be the result of being separated from Daniel’s resting place. Maybe he never really left him. Sometimes...a soul is too wounded to fly.”

     “The first thing Stefano did is apologize to Daniel,” Steve said, turning to face Danny. “Maybe it was his guilt that was weighing him down, holding him here. If he blamed himself, maybe he was afraid Daniel would blame him, too.”

     “So he rested next to him, guarding his grave, which might have been a target for desecration by the authorities if they’d know where it was, being he was considered a traitor and then a murderer of a Roman soldier.”

     “Being there was his only way to be with Daniel...” Steve paused, and Danny could see his eyes filling, as if he was feeling the emotions with Stefano. “The only way he felt he was worthy to be with Daniel because he didn’t protect him in life,” he said, and while he wasn’t speaking exactly as Stefano, it was clear he was speaking for him. “We have to take him back to the cave, Danny.”

     “Father Ignacio’s gonna love that idea.”

     “It’s the right thing to do. It’s where he wanted to be, and where he deserves to be, with the man he loves,” Steve said, taking Danny’s hand. “It’s where I’d want to be if I were him.”

     “For 2,000 years? That’s a hell of a long marriage, babe,” Danny said, squeezing Steve’s hand.

     “Too long for you, Danno?”

     “I’d like the right to re-evaluate things about 1,000 years in, but I can probably handle it.”

     “I’ll have a thousand-year kick-out clause written into the marriage license, okay?”

     “Marriage?”

     “That’s where this is headed, isn’t it?” Steve asked. Danny chuckled and shook his head.

     “I hope Stefano had a smoother proposal technique,” he teased. Steve exhaled, looking exasperated, but he got out of his chair and knelt on one knee.

     “Is this better?”

     “You have to say something, Steven. You can’t just genuflect to me and expect me to figure it out.”

     “We were just talking about it. What is it you’re not clear on? I want you to marry me. Is that so difficult?”

     “Marrying you or sorting out your ass-backwards proposal?”

     “I hope Daniel was smoother at accepting a declaration of lifetime love and commitment.”

     “Maybe if I’d heard one, I would be, too.”

     “Fine. Will you do me the honor of marrying me, Sir Daniel?” Steve asked.

     “If you hadn’t added the snark to it, it would have been lovely.”

     “Did it work?” Steve asked.

     “Yeah, it worked. I’ll marry you, you Neanderthal animal.”

     “Good, so you can nag me for the rest of my life,” Steve replied, grinning.

     “Judging by Stefano and Daniel, a few dozen lifetimes, so get used to it.”

     “I sure hope so, because if we last a million years, it’s still not gonna be enough.”

     “For me, either, babe.” Danny laid his hand on Steve’s cheek. “I love you.”

     “I love you, too, Danno.”

     They kissed then, almost forgetting Roberto and Luciana, until the old lady exclaimed something joyful in Italian and clapped her hands. Then she instructed Roberto to go get something, judging by all the gesturing, and Roberto smiled. When he returned to the table, he had a different wine wit him.

     "This is a better wine for celebrating," Roberto said, filling fresh glasses. "My mother wants to toast you properly."

     The rest of their meal was cheerful and festive, though neither Steve nor Danny could quite get over the fact that an elderly Catholic lady in rural Italy was thrilled to toast a same sex couple's engagement. Then again, very little was typical about Stefano's and Daniel's story, and she seemed to feel an historical wrong had been righted by the two of them reuniting through Steve and Danny.

       
********  


     "I wonder how much Luciana and Roberto can hear through the walls," Danny whispered as they lay in the dark in their bed, undressed but still wearing their shorts.

     "I don't think they're assuming we're waiting for marriage, Danny," Steve replied softly, chuckling.

     "Yeah, but it would be weird to think they could _hear_ us."

     "We can be on our good behavior for a night."

     "What about tomorrow night?"

     "We'll take it one night at a time," Steve said, hugging Danny close, nibbling at his ear.

     "You're not helping."

     "Sorry. Hands off entirely is a little too much."

     "Just don't nibble me, okay?"

     "Okay," Steve agreed, laughing. After a few moments of silence, he spoke again. "We have to take Stefano back to Daniel. No matter what it takes, Danny. It's the right thing to do."

     "I think when Father Ignacio sees you, he's going to take you seriously," Danny said. "When you said that about Stefano...that he thought the only way he was worthy to be with Daniel was guarding his grave...you don't really believe that, do you?"

     Steve was quiet a long time, and when he spoke, his voice was strained.

     "He failed to protect the one person who meant the most to him. Saving Gratia and the children...Daniel gave his life for that and it would have been what he wanted, but still..."

     "Accomplished the mission but the losses were unacceptable?" Danny asked softly, running his hand gently back and forth over Steve's chest. Steve caught his hand and squeezed it.

     "Yeah, something like that."

     "That's how you still feel about Freddie, isn't it? You know, Steve, you're more like Stefano than just your looks."

     "You think so? I guess that's kind of good, because you fell in love with him first."

     "Daniel was in there, monkeying with my head, Steven. Just like Stefano monkeyed with yours. It's all about you, babe. It always was. It just took a little time for me to figure it out."

     "Stefano's been locked up in a box grieving for centuries. We're taking him to Daniel."

     "I know. Whatever it takes. I'm sure Gratia thought she was doing the right thing."

     "I'm sure she did." Steve smiled. "Daniel would be glad you were defending his daughter," Steve said, smiling.

     "I just know that if she's in any way connected to Grace, she was a good person."

     "If she's part of your bloodline, I'll vouch for her," Steve replied, rubbing Danny's shoulder. "Let's get some sleep, Danno. We've got a long trip tomorrow."

     "There's a really nice spot...the pond with the trees..."

     "You think we should, uh, recreate some moments there on the way?"

     "It was nice and desolate when I made the trip."

     "Something to look forward to besides picturesque landscapes, then," Steve said, grinning, kissing Danny before they drifted off to sleep.

       
********  


     After a hearty breakfast with their hosts at the inn, they headed over to the bike shop to rent bikes for their journey. The woman Danny had rented his bike from was the one behind the counter, not her elderly father. Steve and Danny both walked up to the counter, and when she saw Steve, she took a step back, her eyes wide. His smile faltered a bit and he looked at Danny.

     "Told you," Danny replied calmly.

     "I'm sorry, I..." she stammered, taking in a deep breath. "I haven't been to the shrine in years, but the resemblance is uncanny. I'm sure this isn't the first time you've heard that," she said, trying to recover her previously pleasant expression.

     "Steve is a descendant of Stefano," Danny said. "We met in Hawaii...it's a long story, but we...kind of need to complete the circle by going to Santo Stefano."

     "I can see why," she said. "I guess you'll be needing two bikes," she said.

     "Yeah, that'd be good," Steve replied. "I'm sorry I startled you. Danny keeps telling me people are gonna react that way to me but I haven't really believed him until now," Steve admitted.

     "I'm just glad my father wasn't here. He's quite elderly and it would be a big shock to him."

     "I know we scared Luciana at the Inn at first, but she's a pretty spunky little lady," Danny said.

     "Luciana can take care of herself, and most anything else that comes along," the woman agreed, laughing as she took Steve's credit card and charged their bike rentals. "I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for in Santo Stefano," she added, handing him his receipt.

     "I pretty much found what I was looking for already," he said, putting his arm around Danny. "He's gonna marry me," he announced, grinning.

     "Congratulations!" she exclaimed. "Somehow I think Stefano and Daniel would approve."

       
********


	8. Chapter 8

     The first part of their bike ride was uneventful, but it was picturesque. Steve had seen Danny's pictures of the terrain, but it was even more beautiful first hand. Or maybe it was because he was passing the time laughing, joking, and sparring with Danny while they rode the path to Santo Stefano that made it all seem more magical. Through it all, he had that odd feeling Danny and he had discussed on the train: as if they were going home, as if all this land was familiar.

     Danny slowed down and stopped his bike as they came upon the pond surrounded by its ancient trees, the sun glistening on the blue water. It was about the right time for a lunch break, but even if it hadn't been, Steve knew they would have stopped there. Leaving their bikes against a tree, they walked toward the banks of the pond. Danny held out his hand and Steve took it with a smile, following Danny until they stopped by the side of the pond.

     "This is a good spot for lunch," Steve said. "I'll get the blanket," he added.

     "Yeah, what's up with that?" Danny asked. "I noticed it when we were packing up."

     "Luciana thought we might need it for our picnic."

     "She thought we needed the blanket?"

     "Well, yeah, to sit on."

     "Oh, right," Danny said, nodding.

     "What?"

     "I'm just hoping that a little old Italian lady who reminds me of my grandmother didn't send us a blanket figuring we were gonna do it by the pond."

     "Let's stick with the picnic blanket imagery when we think of Luciana," Steve suggested, retrieving the blanket from his bike. Danny got their bag of provisions and they spread out the blanket and used it as it was ostensibly intended to sit and eat their lunch.

     “You dreamed about this spot, too, huh?” Danny took a drink of his bottled water, watching Steve intently. He knew what he’d dreamed about there, but he wondered if Steve had the same experience.

     “Yeah, and I’d never ever seen it. I think they liked it here. A lot,” Steve added, finishing up his sandwich and then looking at Danny.                      

     “You’re looking at me like I’m dessert,” Danny said, setting his water aside.

     Steve got up on all fours and moved across the blanket toward Danny, reminding him of a muscular, sleek panther moving in on its prey. When he took Danny in his arms and covered Danny’s body with his, the move was as smooth and natural as if they’d made love out there dozens of times before. Danny was in no mood to resist the advance, and he relaxed into the kisses and the press of Steve’s body against him, caressing Steve’s back and shoulder while his other hand slid into Steve’s hair.

     “Beats the hell out of a cannoli,” Steve growled, kissing Danny’s neck.

     “There are cannolis in there?” Danny asked, angling his head away a moment.

     “Uh...yeah, Luciana packed cannolis for us.”

     “When were you gonna share that information with me?”

     “Not right now,” Steve replied, chuckling.

     “But you were planning on sharing.”

     “I figured a post-sex cannoli might be good.”

     “Oh, yeah, I could go for that,” Danny agreed, pulling him down for more kisses. Steve paused to take off his t-shirt while Danny did the same before they resumed their heated caresses.

     "I love you," Steve gasped in Danny's ear, working intently at opening Danny's belt and his pants.

 

"I love you, too, babe," Danny replied, smiling, feeling like they were echoing the words and the passion of the past, and yet this was their moment. Danny unzipped Steve, and while they were kissing and rubbing against each other, they somehow managed to wriggle out of their pants until they separated with a laugh to get their shoes off.

     "You sure this is safe here?" Steve asked, now that they were naked. "Seems kind of out in the open," he added.

     "We're behind some shrubs," Danny replied, kissing him again, effectively distracting him from worrying about their surroundings. "Come on, Steven, make love to me here."

     "You sure?" Steve kissed his way down Danny's neck to his chest, one hand skimming his side to his hip, thrusting to bring their hardening erections against each other.

     "Yeah, real sure," he said, squeezing Steve's butt cheek, thrusting again to keep the friction going.

     "Did you bring stuff?"

     "Check my pants pocket," Danny said, grinning at him.

     "You were planning to seduce me out here, huh?"

     "Worked, didn't it?"

     "You don't have to try very hard to seduce me, Danno," Steve said, moving down to lick Danny's nipple, playing with it with his tongue, making him shiver. Noticing the reaction, Steve settled in to licking and sucking at the little nub until it was hard and Danny was moaning, before he moved to the other side, treating it to the same attention. "You taste good, baby," Steve said against Danny's skin, his voice husky as he licked and nipped his way along the soft skin of Danny's stomach.

     "Better than cannoli?" Danny teased, touching the back of Steve's head, smiling.

     "Yeah, no contest." Steve moved up again and kissed him passionately, holding him close, kissing his shoulders and his neck, grabbing his ass with one hand and sliding the other into Danny's hair, running his fingers through it. He finally tore himself away to get the supplies from Danny's pants pocket.

     Danny enjoyed the view, watching Steve's perfectly sculpted naked body moving back toward him. Steve was looking at Danny like he was the most amazing sight in the world. Danny turned over on his stomach and rested his head on his folded arms. "What?"

     "You're really something, Danno," he said, blushing a bit at the words, like he was a little shy about flattering Danny. He straddled Danny’s hips, his thighs warm against Danny’s skin and the promise of his erection teasing the small of Danny’s back. He massaged Danny’s shoulders and kissed the back of his neck while he caressed his back and followed its contours with his hands. He moved back so he could trail kisses down Danny’s spine. Danny relaxed, enjoying the sensations, completely unprepared for Steve to ease his cheeks apart and tease his center with the tip of his tongue.

     “Holy shit, Steven,” he gasped, grabbing a handful of the blanket, his cock getting harder and more urgent. The warm, wet invasion felt good, sexy, forbidden...like nothing else he’d ever felt. He couldn’t remember anyone ever tonguing him that way, focusing on making him feel that good.

     While he felt sorry to lose that feeling, he knew it was going to be replaced with Steve’s finger, and he was looking forward to more stimulation, to that moment when Steve’s fingers would find his prostate and send him into orbit.

     This time was easier, probably because he wasn’t nervous at all. The pain at its worst wasn’t severe the first time they did this, and Steve was a caring, considerate lover who took good care of him. Steve's finger was sliding gently inside him, stretching him carefully, Steve's body covering him, soft lips nibbling at his ear. He could hear the water lapping at the shore and the breeze rustling the leaves. It wasn't unlike his erotic dreams about Stefano, but this was so much better. The love he felt wasn't borrowed from someone else's life. It was his. His and Steve's.

     "Feeling okay, sweetheart?" Steve asked, adding a second finger.

     "More than okay, babe," Danny replied, touching Steve's cheek, angling his head back so they could kiss.

     "I love you," Steve whispered.

     "I know," Danny muttered, feeling a little choked up. "Nobody ever did...what you did..."

     "Their loss," Steve replied, grinning, kissing Danny again. "If Stefano felt this way...no wonder he couldn't live with what happened to Daniel. If you... I couldn't..." Steve didn't finish the thought, but kissed Danny's neck instead.

     "We're not them, babe. We're us, and we're alive...here and now." Danny gasped in pleasure when Steve's fingers found his prostate. "Oh, yeah, we're alive," he added, making Steve laugh softly and kiss his shoulder.

     When Steve did enter him, it was gradual and gentle, and with plenty of time for Danny to adjust to the fullness before Steve tried moving. They found a slow, relaxed, shared rhythm, Steve reaching up to cover the back of Danny's hand, lacing their fingers together. When they came, it was intense and hot and sweet, and they lay there, still joined, letting the breeze dance over their cooling bodies.

     "You ready for that cannoli now?" Steve asked, and Danny laughed.

     "I was thinking about a dip in the pond, then the cannoli," Danny said.

     “Yeah, better idea,” Steve agreed, reluctantly moving to let Danny turn over so they were face to face. Danny reached up and touched Steve’s cheek lightly. “That was pretty amazing,” he said, grinning, kissing the palm of Danny’s hand and holding it.

     “It always is, babe.”

     “We haven’t done it very many times.”

     “You think it’s gonna stop being good?” Danny asked, snorting a laugh.

     “No, I didn’t mean that,” Steve said, sounding nervous, like he was worried he’d offended Danny. “I mean...I’m trying to make it as good for you as it was with Stefano. I just don’t want to screw it up.”

     “I never really had sex with Stefano, Steve. They were hot dreams, images from the past... Is that what you think I want? A clone of Stefano?”

     “I know you said you didn’t. I guess I keep comparing it.”

     “You’re competing with a dead guy, Steve. Let it go. You won, okay?”

     “I’m that competitive?”

     “Yes.” Danny hugged him, laughing. _I know you’re kind of insecure deep down in there, too, babe, but you don’t have to be with me._ “It’s okay. I’ll just have to think of something to keep convincing you.”

     “You’re doing great so far.”

     “That’s good to hear.”

     They enjoyed a romp in the water, swimming around a bit before meeting again in the middle and bringing their wet bodies together for more kisses and caresses. After drying off and getting dressed, they sat by the pond and enjoyed their dessert, feeding each other and sharing creamy sweet kisses in between bites.

     The rest of the ride to Santo Stefano was relaxed and pleasant, and they arrived at the little village by late afternoon. It was as serene as it had been when Danny first visited there alone, with a few people outside their homes and a small market open for business in what was the center of town, not far from the church.

     “We should probably go straight to the church and do what we came to do,” Danny said. “At least see if Father Ignacio is there. People are going to start freaking out if they see you up close.”

     “I didn’t really believe you until Luciana reacted to me like she’d just seen a ghost.”

     “The rectory’s around back,” Danny said as they parked their bikes near the entrance to the church. The doors were chained like they had been when Danny visited before. This time, Stefano didn’t seem inclined to zap them open. In fact, Danny tried to shake off the fact it felt like there was a distinct chill in the air around the church. Steve retrieved the long-sleeved shirt he’d brought along and put it on over his t-shirt. “Thought it was just me,” Danny finally admitted as he put on the light jacket he’d brought along.

     “Getting cloudy,” Steve said, though the clouds were only passing.

     “Yeah, I guess.” Danny led the way toward the entrance to the rectory and knocked. After a few minutes, they heard the door unlatch and it opened. Father Ignacio stood there in a pair of jeans and a casual shirt.

     “This is a surprise,” he said, looking at Danny. And then his eyes moved to Steve, and he literally took a step back, stunned.

     “Father Ignacio, this is Steve McGarrett. I guess I’m kind of stating the obvious that he’s a descendant of Stefano.”

     “Just a bit,” the priest muttered, still staring. “Forgive me, but the resemblance is uncanny to the point of being...nearly unbelievable. Please, come in.” He stepped back for them to enter. “Forgive the attire. I wasn’t expecting anyone today. I’m actually building some shelves in my office, so I’m not in my usual suit,” he added, though he was still staring at Steve despite his best efforts to avoid it.

     “We should have called, but I wasn’t sure how to explain...everything,” Danny said. “I should apologize for how I left the last time I was here. I was pretty rude.”

     “Not at all. It was a lot to take in,” he said. “You two must be tired. It’s a long ride out here. Would you like to sit down, have something to drink?”

     “That would be great,” Steve responded. “We don’t want to put you out.”

     “It’s not a bother. I don’t exactly get flooded with company here, so it’s a nice break,” he said, gesturing at the furniture in the living room. “Have a seat and I’ll get us some refreshments.” Then he paused. “You’re undoubtedly here to see Stefano?”

     “Yes, and we have something to talk over with you,” Steve said.

     “Of course. I’ll be right back,” he said.

     “He didn’t faint,” Steve whispered to Danny as he sat next to him on the couch, their hips touching.

     “I guess we’re not staying in the closet with the good father, huh?” Danny teased him, nudging him with his knee.

     “He knows Stefano’s and Daniel’s story, so telling him we’re just a couple of travelin’ buddies seems a little silly, doesn’t it?”

     “Can’t argue with that logic.”

     Father Ignacio returned with a tray bearing a pitcher of sangria and three glasses.

     “I was ready for a break myself,” he said, setting the tray on the coffee table and filling glasses for his guests first. As he filled his own, he stole a glance at Steve and Danny. “I suspect _you_ have a story for _me_ this time,” he said.

     “It’s a little hard to believe,” Danny said. Father Ignacio finished his first sip of his drink and chuckled.

     “You mean unlike the completely plausible stories I shared with you when you first visited?”

     “I suppose you have a point there,” Danny agreed, smiling. “I really am sorry for how I left. It was just...too much to sort out.”

     “Clearly you managed to find each other, I’m guessing in the States,” he said.

     “Steve was in Hawaii, I was in New Jersey, so it took a little doing.”

     “Well, this does sound like quite a yarn. Please, continue.”

     Danny and Steve shared the task of telling Father Ignacio the whole story, from Danny’s divorce and move to Hawaii, the dreams about Stefano and his alleged appearances to Rachel and Grace, to Steve’s own dreams and visions of Stefano and Daniel and their first meeting in the McGarrett garage. Finally, they described their short and bumpy road to their engagement, and about the weird incident with Stefano seeming to speak through Steve, and the revelation it brought with it.

     “We want to return Stefano’s remains to the cave, so he can rest with Daniel,” Steve said. “After all this time, it seems like they deserve to be together, and I think that’s why he can’t rest now.”

     “I had no idea Daniel was buried in the cave. There’s no reliable record about his remains, and I suspect that was intentional so his grave wouldn’t be disturbed or desecrated, since he was considered a criminal at the time of his death.” Father Ignacio sighed. “It’s strange that Gratia would disturb his resting place at all.”

     “Maybe she didn’t know where Daniel was buried, either,” Danny said. “Stefano committed suicide shortly after Daniel’s death, so it’s likely he never told Gratia where her father was buried.”

     “It’s hard to explain without sounding nuts, and trust me, Father, this kind of thing is hard for me to swallow, but I felt his feelings, and the pain inside him about Daniel’s death. He’s never felt worthy to move on and be with Daniel in eternity...he feels like he failed him and that he was only worthy to stand guard over his grave, and he can’t even do that now since his remains were moved,” Steve concluded.

     “I certainly hope, if we were to undertake such a thing, that it would allow him to permanently reunite with Daniel,” Father Ignacio said.

     “We thought he had, but it feels like there’s a barrier he can’t cross without help, and that’s why we’re hoping that physically reuniting them, putting him back where he wants to be, will allow that to happen,” Danny said.

     “Stefano is the heart of this village. He has been for generations. I’m not sure we can just carry him off in the dark of night and bury him without allowing the parishioners to have any say in it.”

     “With all due respect, Father, he’s not an antique chalice or a sliver of wood from the Cross,” Steve said. “He’s a human being. I’m not sure his right to rest in his grave near the man he loved without being a sideshow is a matter for debate.”

     “He’s hardly a sideshow. More like a patron saint,” Father Ignacio said. He paused a few moments. “If I address the congregation, give them an opportunity to participate in the decision, these are good people and I believe they'll do the right thing.”

     “Even if a majority vote goes our way, do you think we'd run the risk of some nut digging him up again?” Danny said.

     “The lore about the cave is well known,” Father Ignacio said. “I don’t believe we can just move him there without that risk still existing. We’d almost have to report that the body had somehow been destroyed, or had decomposed.”

     “He didn’t decompose even when his original grave was disturbed, so that’s a hard sell,” Steve said. “Didn’t most of the incorrupt corpses recognized by the Church suffer some decomposition when their graves were opened?”

     “Yes, many did. And, if they are examined or moved...I am acutely aware that conditions involving moisture, temperature, air quality...all those factors contribute to the real world reasons that bodies don’t rot. Honestly that is why Stefano is so remarkable. It’s as if he’s sleeping rather than dead. In some kind of...eternal coma. His remains never would have survived all the moving and exposure to the air they have over the generations, even if he was initially preserved.”

     “Doesn’t sound like you buy the whole preserved corpse situation as a miracle,” Steve said.

     “I do think it is in some cases. It is in this case, because the conditions his body has been exposed to over time have changed, and he never does. There isn’t a single sign of decomposition or corruption of any kind.”

     “I’d like to see him,” Steve said.

     “Of course,” Father Ignacio said, standing. “Come with me.”

     They walked down the long corridor between the rectory and the church until Father Ignacio unlocked the large double doors into the church and led the way through it to the rustic shrine that surrounded Stefano’s remains.

     “I guess nobody’s keeping up with the flowers anymore, huh?” Danny commented as he noticed that the flowers around the shrine were all withered and dead. There was no candlelight in the shrine, either. Father Ignacio had borrowed a small candle from the altar, lit it, and was now moving into the shadows to begin lighting the candles near Stefano’s coffin.

     “The flowers were fresh this morning, and as many times as I light these, they extinguish themselves.” Father Ignacio paused, sighing. “You see, something has changed, and I believe Stefano is no longer content with his situation. Do you feel the temperature in here?”

     “It’s chilly,” Steve commented.

     “It feels like we are less in the presence of holiness now than we are in the presence of a restless, angry spirit. What you’ve told me...it makes sense. He wants to leave and we’re keeping him prisoner here. Until you came here today, I wasn’t sure how to appease him, but it has become clear he is restless.”

     Father Ignacio lit the rest of the candles, and Steve took a couple steps back when he got his first look at Stefano.

     “Oh my God...” he muttered, staring. “It’s me.”

     “The resemblance is incredible,” Danny said, touching Steve’s arm.

     Steve finally moved closer, laying his hand on the glass, looking down at his ancestor. Danny moved with him, getting a closer look at Stefano. His skin seemed paler, the lines of his mouth seemed set, and not in peace or contentment, but in a frown.

     “He’s changed,” Danny said, backing up a little.

     “You noticed,” Father Ignacio said, nodding. “I barely did, because I see him every day. But one day I really began taking notice, and his expression wasn’t the same. Then the flowers began to die and the candles would not stay lit.”

     “Is the congregation aware of that change?” Steve asked.

     “The women who place the flowers know, because they would always change them as soon as they wilted. Now there are here every day and it still isn’t enough to keep them fresh. One of the ladies refuses to come back because she feels it is no longer a friendly or holy presence. I wouldn’t go that far; I think it is still Stefano, but it makes sense now why he’s unhappy. Or, more unhappy that usual. I’m not sure he’s ever been happy or at peace.”

     “We’re taking you back to Daniel,” Steve said, one hand on the glass and one hand holding Danny’s hand. “You can rest where you belong.”

     “Father, if you address the congregation, explain the situation, don’t you think these people would want to do what was right? This is obviously not right, and something’s changed. They don’t have to take your word for it,” Danny said. “Maybe people could tell themselves it was all right to keep him like this before, but it’s obvious now that it isn’t.”

     "I agree. As I said, I believe in the people here, and their reverence for Stefano has lasted for hundreds of years. I believe they would always show the utmost respect for his memory...and his final wishes, if they have reason to believe they are somehow violating those wishes now." He paused. "Let me call a special gathering tonight. I'll say Mass and address the congregation. We'll leave the flowers just as they are, ask the ladies who maintain them to vouch for their experiences."

     "I hope they live up to your expectations," Steve said. "Your parishioners, I mean."

     "To move or bury his remains without consulting them would gut this village, take from them something they consider very sacred. I believe they'll choose the right path."

      
********  


     They spent the remainder of the afternoon at the rectory while Father Ignacio and his housekeeper spread the word about the special gathering and Mass to be said that night. Since neither of them spoke more than a few words of Italian, their helpfulness in reaching out to the villagers was limited. Steve's resemblance to Stefano made strolling around the village an unrealistic option, at least until they'd shared some information with the villagers and explained his connection to Stefano.

     "You've been awfully quiet since we visited the church," Danny said to Steve, his voice seeming loud and startling since they'd been sitting in the living room in silence for some time.

     "It's a little shocking to come face to face with...yourself," he admitted. "I didn't really believe you about how intense the resemblance was, although my dreams and visions...he pretty much looked like he did in the coffin." Steve was quiet a moment. "It's strange seeing yourself dead."

     "It's not you, Steve. He looks like you...a _lot_ like you. But he's not you." Danny moved from the chair where he was sitting to sit next to Steve on the couch. "Your eyes are your own, and when you look at me...I know it's you and not him."

     Steve smiled at that, leaning over to kiss Danny.

      
********  


     Father Ignacio’s faith in his congregation was well-placed. He met with no resistance to the plan to return Stefano to his original resting place, and plans were made to do so within two days. Given the remoteness of the village, they needed the extra time to bring a coffin from neighboring town, and also to plan the transportation of it to the cave where the believed Daniel’s remains had been buried by Stefano himself centuries ago. A local farmer volunteered his pickup truck, and while it was not exactly an elegant hearse, it would serve the purpose.

     Parishioners paid their final respects at the shrine the next day, and a small committee of them participated in carefully transferring the body from the glass coffin to the solid one that would be used for the burial. Only a few people actually traveled through the somewhat rougher terrain to the cave, braving a pitted and barely passable roadway through dense woods until the truck driven by its owner, a local man, and his son, and the SUV following it, carrying Steve, Danny, Father Ignacio, and three other local men, had to stop and the remainder of the journey had to be made on foot. Fortunately the cave wasn’t far from the roadway, but it did require the men to carry the casket some distance over less than ideal terrain for that purpose. They also carried with them a large spray of flowers the women at the church assembled to be laid on the new grave.

     The task wasn’t an easy one. Once they found the cave, its entrance somewhat obscured by vines and overgrowth, they transported the casket inside, relieved to find that the central portion of it was fairly large and allowed them to stand comfortably. There was little way to know exactly where Daniel’s or Stefano’s remains had originally been placed, but they chose a spot that would place Stefano in a horizontal position to the entrance, as if to guard it, and Daniel, from the outside world. With all of them diligently digging, they were able to place the coffin in its new grave. Father Ignacio stood at the head of the grave, before the dirt was to be filled in.

     “O God, by Whose mercy the faithful departed find rest, send Your holy angel to watch over this grave, through Christ our Lord.” He paused. “Heavenly Father, please also bless the grave of your servant, Daniel, and bring these lost souls together so they may find peace. Amen.”

     The others all echoed his “Amen”, and together filled in the grave, and laid the spray of flowers over the newly replaced soil.

      
********  


     “You think Stefano’s at peace now?” Danny asked as they lay in bed in the guest room at the rectory. It was late, but neither of them had much luck sleeping. 

     “I hope so. If he’s not, there’s not much more we can do for him,” Steve said, sighing. “It seems odd not to...feel his presence. So maybe he really is gone."

     "As long as he finds Daniel. They deserve to finally be together." Danny sighed. "You know, Steve, if anything ever happens to me, and you can't stop it, it's not your fault."

     "Why would you even bring that up now?" Steve asked, and he sounded genuinely unsettled by it.

     "It's not that far out of a conversation for us to have, given our line of work, and what brought us together."

     "If anything happened to you...I wouldn't fucking care whose fault it was, or...about anything," Steve mumbled.

     "Daniel never blamed Stefano, and yet Stefano blamed himself, felt like he didn't deserve to be by Daniel's side even in the afterlife. I'm sure if Daniel had known he was going to suffer like that, he'd have told him it was okay."

     "Okay that he was killed."

     "No, of course not, but that it wasn't Stefano's fault, and that he still belonged with the man he loved. It wasn't his fault, Steve. They were in an awful situation, and it all just...unfolded that way. People don't get a chance when it's too late to tell the people left behind not to tear themselves up with grief over something that doesn't even really matter. People die and the people who love them obsess over things they didn't say or things they did say, stuff they didn't do that they meant to, or, worst of all, like Stefano, they blame themselves for the whole thing. So I'm telling you right now, while I'm alive and well and there's no reason to feel bad about it, that if that ever happens, it wasn't your fault, I know you love me, and if we had some dumb argument or said something shitty to each other even, like, _seconds_ before it happens, I died loving you and I'm always gonna know you love me even if you do something assholish."

     "Gee, thanks, Danno," Steve said, but despite the slight chuckle, he was wiping at his eyes. "I feel the same way," he added. Danny smiled at that, knowing it was a lot easier for Steve to say it that way than to put it in as many words as he had.

     "I know, babe," he said, giving Steve a squeeze where his arm was around his middle. "So if something happens, just come find me in whatever's on the other side, okay?"

     "Yeah, sure, you, too."

     "I will."

     "I guess we can take that 'til death do us part' thing out of the vows then, huh?"

     "I never liked that part anyway, so yeah, fine. I'm still gonna be in love with you then, so why would it part us?"

     "It won't." Steve slipped his hand into Danny's hair and rested his head against Danny's.

      
********  


     The next morning dawned with abundant sunshine and a mild temperature. Angela prepared a big breakfast to sustain them on their journey back to the village where they'd catch the train back to Rome.

     "So when is the big day?" Father Ignacio asked. Steve looked up, blank, mouth full of eggs.

     "He means when are we getting married," Danny clarified, shaking his head, smiling. Mouth now cleared of the food, Steve replied.

     "We didn't really set a date. Soon, I hope," he added, grinning at Danny.

     "Probably be a while before the Church gets on board with same sex marriages," Danny said.

     "Unfortunately, that's true," Father Ignacio said.

     "You'd be in favor of that?" Steve asked.

     "I, and many others in this village, exist because a male couple protected our ancestors. Would be a bit hypocritical of me to object to same sex unions," he said, smiling, taking a sip of his coffee.

     "Hypocrisy doesn't seem to bother a lot of people when it comes to bigotry," Steve said.

     "I'm sure with your military background, you're no stranger to that. I think the Church and the armed forces have a lot in common in that regard."

     "They're not exactly broad-minded, no," Steve agreed.

     "Neither are the police, typically," Father Ignacio said. "You two have some difficult times ahead."

     "Maybe, but it's nothing compared to what Stefano and Daniel went through, and it didn't change how they felt about each other," Danny replied. "For a couple thousand years," he added.

     "Some things are meant to be," Steve agreed, taking Danny's hand. "If the rest of the world can't handle that, they can go f...uh, I mean, they'll have to deal with it," he said, and Danny chuckled as Father Ignacio smiled.

     "That's the spirit," he said. "But then I'd expect no less from Stefano's descendant."

      
********  


     With their supplies packed, they took a moment to visit the empty shrine one last time. It was shrouded in shadows, dead and dying flower arrangements set aside from where they had moved Stefano's coffin out the day before.

     "Weird to see it without him here," Danny said. "But I think we did the right thing."

     "So do I." Steve turned to face Danny. "You know, we're in a church, one that has a lot of meaning for us. We probably won't tie the knot in a church back home."

     "Probably not," Danny agreed. "Maybe we should take advantage of the moment."

     "I'm not really the poetic type, Danno," Steve said, taking Danny's hands in his. "But I love you, and I know I'll love you as long as Stefano loved Daniel. It's not because I'm still feeling his feelings, but because...as soon as I met you, something...just fell into place...in here," he said, withdrawing one of his hands to cover his heart. "And I realized it was never really about Stefano's feelings. I think he helped me find you so I didn't miss out on the love of my life."

     Danny smiled, brushing at his eyes with his free hand. "Damn, I never cried at a wedding before. Figures I'd start with my own," he said, and they both laughed. "I never would have wound up in Hawaii without Stefano. And I'm really thankful for this whole situation because I didn't even like you at first, so the chances of me sleeping with you, let alone marrying you, were pretty slim."

     "Gee, thanks," Steve replied, smiling.

     "Stefano made me look at you, opened my mind to the possibility...but it was always you, and it always will be. I love you, Steven, and whatever lies ahead, I'm up for it as long as I have you."

     "Should we say something official? Like vows?" Steve asked.

     "Do you promise to stay with me for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, forever?" Danny asked.

     "I do," Steve responded. "Do you promise to be my partner in every sense of the word and always love me, even if you don't always like me?" Steve asked, grinning.

     "I do," Danny replied through a little laugh.

     "Can we do the kissing part now?"

     "Yeah, let's do that part to seal the deal," Danny agreed. As they kissed, they noticed a change in the lighting and parted to see all the candles in Stefano's shrine lit again and burning bright, casting a golden glow.

     "Danny...the flowers," Steve muttered, staring at them, stunned. All the withered arrangements were vibrant again, alive and colorful as if they'd just been placed there, fresh.

     "Now I feel good about going home," Danny said, slipping his arm around Steve's waist as Steve's arm went around his shoulders. "Because Stefano and Daniel are finally home."

 

 _The clock will tick away the hours one by one_ __  
Then the time will come when all the waiting's done  
The time when you return and find me here and run  
Straight to my waiting arms

 


End file.
